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THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 



THE 

MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 



BY 

HENRY MELVILLE KING 

Tastor of the First "Baptist Church, "Providence, 7^. /. 



Philadelphia 

Bmertcan baptist f>ubltcatfon Society 

J420 Chestnut Street 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Twe Copies Received 

FEB 2 1904 

V Copyright Entry 

iW T.T.-/ rq<\ 
C la s s r — xxc, No. 

u- o "* J" 
COPY B 






Copyright 1899 by 
Henry Melville King 



j/rom tbe press of tbe 
Bmerican JBaptist publication Society 



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TTo fills XKUife 



PREFACE 



The Psalms are used largely for devotional pur- 
poses. As expressions of penitence and depend- 
ence, of faith in God and thanksgiving for mercies 
received, of humility and devout aspiration, they 
will never be superseded. They voice the deepest 
sentiments and record the richest experiences of 
devout souls of all times. So long as human nature 
remains what it is, the Psalms of David and his 
companion poets will hold a permanent place in 
the devotional literature of the spiritual Israel. 

Mrs. Charles has beautifully said, " Beginning 
often in the tumultuous depths, these Psalms soar 
into the calm light of heaven. An inspired liturgy 
for all time, and the prophetic utterance of a sor- 
row which knew no equal, they are yet the natural 
expression of the struggles and hopes, the repent- 
ings and thanksgivings of the human hearts who 
first spoke them." 

These words affirm that David was more than 
"the sweet singer of Israel," and that the inspired 
Psalms had other purposes than simply devotional. 
David and his companions were prophets of God, 
in the sense of foreseers and foretellers, who were 



Vlll PREFACE 

"moved by the Holy Ghost" to forecast the future, 
and the Psalms form a part of those predictive 
Scriptures, the burden of whose message was a 
coming Messiah, who should combine in one per- 
son the characters of a suffering Saviour and a vic- 
torious king. In some true sense Christ was "the 
Desire of all nations." In a more real and definite 
sense he was the expectation of the Jewish people. 

This volume is an attempt to unfold the prophe- 
cies referring to Christ contained in the Hebrew 
Psalter, restricted for the most part to those utter- 
ances which Christ and the writers of the New 
Testament declare to be applicable to him. The 
interpretation of prophecy generally may be at- 
tended with some liability to error, but that liability 
is completely removed when the prophecy has 
been accurately fulfilled and its fulfillment has 
been asserted by Christ and his inspired apostles. 

It has seemed desirable to substantiate the per- 
sonal views of the author on important points by 
numerous quotations from the writings of bibli- 
cal scholars of acknowledged ability and candor. 
These quotations, it is believed, have greatly en- 
riched the volume and increased its value. The 
aim of the author has been to present the subject 
in such a way as to be helpful to careful students, 
and at the same time attractive to ordinary readers 
of the sacred Scriptures. 

Fulfilled prophecy is indisputable evidence of 



PREFACE IX 

the inspiration of the Bible and of the supernatu- 
ral origin of the Christian religion. It is said that 
Frederick the Great once asked "What proof is 
there of the fulfillment of prophecy?" The an- 
swer was "The Jews, your Majesty." It might 
have been with equal propriety "Jesus Christ, your 
Majesty." Christ was the theme of abundant 
prophecy and the subject of accurate history. 
May this brief study of him, in the light of both 
prophecy and history, help to make him the ac- 
cepted King of Glory and Saviour of the world. 

H. M. K. 

Providence, June, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Psalm II i 

II. Psalm XXII 25 

III. Psalm CX 49 

IV. Psalm XVI 71 

V. Psalm LXXII 97 

VI. Psalm XLV 121 

VII. Psalm XLVI 147 

VIII. Special Quotations 171 

IX. Special Quotations (continued) 197 

X. Conclusion 229 



CHAPTER I 
PSALM II 



This psalm is one of the most inter- 
a esting and instructive in the entire 

book of inspired poetry. Its striking language 
and its sublimity of thought give to it a conspic- 
uous place in the literature of the ancient Hebrews. 
Undoubtedly it had, like other psalms, a local occa- 
sion and reference ; but it is very difficult, if not 
impossible, to ascertain what it was, and connect 
the psalm with any known events in Jewish history 
in the reign of David, or Solomon, or Ahaz (in 
each case the attempt has been made), or of any 
other king. It has every appearance of having a 
wider and spiritual application, a prophetic mean- 
ing and outlook, and directs the thoughts inevi- 
tably to the enthronement of another King and the 
establishment and triumph of another kingdom, 
which were yet to come. 
Dr. John Pye Smith says : 

The characters of this psalm are such as to leave us no 
rational ground of applying them to David or Solomon, or 
any of their successors ; or to any other person than to that 
future Sovereign, the predicted descendant in whom David 
trusted and rejoiced, and tuned the harp of Zion to cele- 
brate his holy dominion. 

3 



4 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

On the other hand, Dr. E. P. Barrows thinks the 
psalm may have had a local occasion and refer- 
ence, but pointed distinctly to a larger fulfillment 
in the future. He says : 

The second Psalm, which describes the vain conspiracy 
of the heathen rulers against the Lord' s anointed king, and 
God' s purpose to give him the uttermost ends of the earth 
for his possession, may have had its occcasion in the com- 
bination of the surrounding heathen nations against David. 
In the victorious might with which God endowed him, it 
had a lower fulfillment ; and this was, so to speak, the first 
sheaf of the harvest of victories that was to follow. It was 
an earnest and pledge of the complete fulfillment of the 
psalm in Christ, in whom alone the promise made to David, 
"Thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for 
ever before thee : thy throne shall be established forever, ' ' 1 
could have its real accomplishment. 2 

Even Kuenen acknowledges : 

We do not overlook the fact that the poet who com- 
posed the second Psalm, although proceeding upon a real- 
ity, yet just because he is a poet, rises far above the reality. 
The historical king whom he has in view, assumes, as it 
were, larger proportions, and becomes as depicted by him, 
an ideal. Connecting points, therefore, are not wanting for 
applying this poem to the Messiah. 

Alford says : 

The Messianic import of this psalm has been acknowl- 
edged even by those who usually deny such references. 

1 2 Sam. 7:16. 2 Luke 1 : 32, 33. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 5 

This psalm, then, has uniformly been regarded 
by Christian interpreters as Messianic, that is, as 
having reference to the Messiah of the Jews, and 
hence to the Christ of the Gospels, for they are 
believed to be one and the same person. The 
belief in the Messianic character of the psalm rests 
on the following grounds. 

In the first place, the ancient Jewish writers in- 
variably referred the psalm to the Messiah. What- 
ever views they may have held about any local 
reference, they were agreed as to its prophetic 
character. Jewish commentators say distinctly 
that their forefathers made this Messianic applica- 
tion. It is true that some of the later Jews have 
rejected this interpretation ; but their rejection of 
it has evidently been the result of their unwilling- 
ness to allow Christians to appeal to the psalm as 
proof that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah. 

Then too, the contents of the psalm plainly in- 
dicate that it was prophetic and Messianic. Its 
language cannot be applied to any earthly king 
or ruler without the greatest exaggeration. The 
kingdom was to be universal in its extent, and 
Gentiles as well as Jews were to be its subjects : 
"Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for 
thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the 
eartli for thy possession." This is exactly in har- 
mony with what the Bible teaches about the reign 
of the Messiah. It is to be universally extended. 



6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Moreover, in the psalm a rebellion is spoken of, 
formidable and far-reaching, embracing kings as 
well as peoples, which finds no parallel in the reign 
of David, and still less in the peaceful reign of 
Solomon, but which is accurately and painfully de- 
scriptive of that moral rebellion, obstinate and 
wicked, which exists among men against God and 
his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

It should be noticed, also, that the benediction at 
the end of the psalm, " Blessed are all they that put 
their trust in him" is a benediction which in the 
Scriptures is used only of God or the Son of God, 
and is a very strong proof that the psalm could be 
understood of no earthly sovereign. 

But the strongest proof of all, that this psalm 
refers to Christ, the foretold Messiah, is the use and 
endorsement of it made by the inspired writers of 
the New Testament. If in the New Testament we 
find quotations from any portion of the Old applied 
to Christ, his person, his life, his character, his king- 
dom, his reign on earth, we can have no doubt but 
that was the original intent and design. Any other 
view destroys all confidence in the inspiration of 
these writers, and in their authority as teachers of 
revealed truth. Considered simply as men and 
students of the Hebrew Scriptures, they were as 
well acquainted with them and their true meaning 
as modern scholars, and were two thousand years 
nearer the origin of the writings which they inter- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS J 

preted. Considered as men inspired and especially 
enlightened by the Spirit of God, their exposition 
of the Scriptures, which the same Spirit of truth 
had previously inspired, may well be accepted as 
authoritative and final. 

In Acts 4 : 25-27 we read : "Who by the mouth 
of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen 
rage, and the people imagine vain things? The 
kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were 
gathered together against the Lord, and against his 
Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, 
whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius 
Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, 
were gathered together." In these words the disci- 
ples distinctly acknowledge the Davidic authorship 
of the psalm in a manner peculiarly strong and per- 
sonal, and refer the psalm directly and unequivo- 
cally to Christ, declaring that the first two verses 
found a literal fulfillment when Herod and Pilate, 
Jew and Gentile, rulers and people, conspired 
against the life and the divine sovereignty of Christ. 

In Acts 13 : 33 the Apostle Paul quotes the 
seventh verse of the psalm, "Thou art my Son, 
this day have I begotten thee," as having been 
spoken with reference to Christ, and having been 
fulfilled at the time of his resurrection from the 
dead. In like manner in Heb. 1 : 5 the same verse 
is quoted as having been the language addressed 
by God the Father to Jesus the divine Son, indeed 



8 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

as if this were its original and exclusive use, and it 
is brought forward in the Epistle to show the su- 
periority of Christ, in nature and rank, to the holy 
angels. A similar quotation is made in Heb. 5 : 5. 

Kuenen having acknowledged, as already quoted, 
the legitimate Messianic application of this psalm, 
criticises the New Testament writers for an alleged 
contradictory reference of the seventh verse, viz : 
" Thou art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee," 
one writer referring it, in his opinion, to Christ's 
glory in his pre-existent state, 1 and another to the 
glory conferred upon him at his resurrection. 2 If 
this two-fold reference were true, it would be per- 
fectly justifiable, for Christ himself declared that 
the glory of his pre-existent state and his resurrec- 
tion glory were essentially one and the same : 
" And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine 
own self with the glory which I had with thee 
before the world was." 3 

But Kuenen is in error in supposing two differ- 
ent references of the words by New Testament 
writers. Dr. Franklin Johnson, in his able volume, 
"The Quotations of the New Testament from the 
Old," p. 238, is correct when he says : 

The supposed diversity of view does not exist. In Acts 
13 : 33 the words are brought into connection with the 
resurrection of Jesus, as Kuenen says, and they are brought 

1 Heb. I : 5; 5 -.5. 2 Acts 13 : 33. 3 John 17 : 5. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 9 

into no other connection in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In 
Heb. I : 5 they are quoted as referring to the glory of 
Christ as the Son of God, but no point of time is indicated, 
unless it is that of the preceding verse, which refers to the 
glory to which his resurrection introduced him. In Heb. 
5 : 5-10 the words of the psalm are distinctly referred to 
this state of glory ; for both his Sonship and his priesthood 
are considered as having commenced after his sufferings. 
Thus all the instances in which the psalm is quoted are in 
perfect accord. It should be added that both in the Acts 
and the Epistle to the Hebrews the Sonship of Christ is 
regarded as beginning at his resurrection only declaratively, 
since that event demonstrated to the world a dignity which 
had existed from eternity. 

These repeated citations and references by the 
inspired writers of the New Testament leave us in 
no doubt as to the psalm's prophetic meaning and 
application. It is a sublime vision of the establish- 
ment and progress of Christ's kingdom in the 
world, encountering opposition indeed, of men in 
high places and in low places, violent and wide- 
spread, but utterly vain and contemptible in view 
of the being and power of him against whom it 
rages, and it contains an emphatic declaration of 
the purpose of God himself, in spite of all ob- 
stacles, to place his Son, the Messiah, upon the 
throne of universal dominion, whose royal anger 
shall be certain and overwhelming destruction, and 
whose princely favor shall be blessing and life for- 
evermore. 

Such is the inspiring outline and purpose of this 



IO I HE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

psalm, as uniformly understood. It will be profit- 
able to examine it now in detail and analyze its 
remarkable structure. The style is exceedingly 
dramatic, and several speakers are introduced, a 
fact which gives to it all the vividness and im- 
pressiveness of an actual scene. No less than four 
different persons, or parties, are brought forward 
in the brief drama, viz, the psalmist, the multitude 
in rebellion, Jehovah, and his Anointed Son. It is 
a bold and graphic representation of the greatest 
facts in the world's history, a truthful picture of the 
moral relation of men to the righteous Sovereign 
of the universe, an instructive lesson setting forth 
the folly of disobedience and the wisdom of sub- 
mission to God's almighty Son, and an inspired 
prophecy of his ultimate and glorious triumph in 
the world. 

We hear, first (ver. I, 2), the voice of the psalm- 
ist, expressing his amazement at the picture which 
he sees among men, the wild tumult of a great 
rebellion, whole peoples combining in open insur- 
rection, kings joining in a wicked and foolish con- 
spiracy against the rightful Sovereign of all men : 
" Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine 
a vain thing f The kings of the earth set them- 
selves, and the rulers take counsel together, against 
Jehovah, and against his Anointed." 

The loyal heart of the psalmist breaks out in 
astonished utterance at such strange and inexplica- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I I 

ble conduct, that men, that any men, should pre- 
sume, should dare, should be so rash as to rise in 
rebellion against the Almighty, and refuse to ac- 
knowledge his Anointed Son. "Why" — a question 
at once of wonder and horror. Why do they en- 
ter upon such an unnatural and hazardous under- 
taking ? Why do they embark upon such an un- 
holy and preposterous conspiracy? It is not a 
cruel tyrant or an unrighteous usurper, but the 
true and blessed King, the lawful Sovereign of 
mankind, against whom they have taken up arms. 
"It is Jehovah himself who is assailed in the per- 
son of the King, whom he has set on the throne. 
Such an enterprise cannot but fail. In its very 
nature it is a vain thing." "In this word," says 
Luther, "is comprised the argument of nearly the 
whole psalm. How can they succeed, who set 
themselves against Jehovah and against his Christ? " 
Why, then, will men undertake and persist in such 
an unholy, futile, unjustifiable, insane rebellion ? 
Why will they do it? It is the exclamation of an 
irrepressible astonishment and moral shock. It is 
no wonder that the psalmist's heart was over- 
whelmed with surprise. It is enough to excite the 
deepest amazement in every thoughtful mind that 
even one man, and much more that whole nations, 
aye, that the whole race of men, should lift up a 
hostile hand against a Being of infinite power and 
purity and love. 



12 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

But in the midst of the psalmist's words, break- 
ing in like a sudden interruption, rises the loud, 
blasphemous shout of the rebels, unanimous, unre- 
lenting, and defiant (ver. 3): "Let us break their 
bands asunder, and cast away t/ieir cords from us" 
"The metaphor," it has been said, "is borrowed 
from restive animals, which break the cords and 
throw off the yoke." There could not be a more 
accurate description of man's condition. This re- 
veals the very essence of all sin. It is a breaking 
away from wholesome restraint, a refusal to ac- 
knowledge rightful authority, a setting up of one's 
own will against the will of God, a determination 
to have one's own way in defiance of the known 
precepts of Christ and the distinct teachings of 
conscience. Christ expressed it in a single sugges- 
tive word, when he represented the wicked and re- 
bellious servants of the parable as saying, " We 
will not have this man to reign over us." We 
have seen how it is illustrated in the family. First, 
there is a chafing under parental counsel, then a 
murmuring against kind and wholesome restraints, 
then a secret disobedience of expressed wishes, 
then an open disregard of wise commands, then at 
last a bold and defiant breaking away from all 
home authority and influence, the asserting of 
one's own will as supreme ; and the rebellion is an 
accomplished and bitter fact. A sad day is it 
when the heart of the child grows restless under 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 3 

the holy restraints of home and parental authority. 
It is the swelling and bursting of seeds whose fruit 
will be painful and deadly. Yet the whole world 
is represented as having broken away from the wise 
and beneficent authority of the great Father, and 
as having lifted its rebellious hand against the Sov- 
ereign of all nations and of all worlds ; and this is 
the spoken or unspoken sentiment of every disobe- 
dient heart: "Let us break their bands asunder, 
and cast away their cords from us." 

Again the psalmist speaks. Seeing the foolish- 
ness and futility of all attempted resistance of the 
Almighty, he declares (ver. 4, 5) : "He that sitteth 
in the heavens shall laugh : the Lord shall have 
them in derision. Then shall lie speak unto them in 
his wrath, arid vex them in his sore displeasure." 
In explanation of these striking words another has 
said: "From all this wild tempest of confusion 
upon earth, from the trampling of gathering armies, 
and the pride of kingly captains and their words 
of haughty menace, the poet turns his eye to 
heaven. There, on his everlasting throne, sits the 
almighty King, in whose sight all nations and kings 
are but as a drop of the bucket." It is the picture 
of the calm tranquillity of One who patiently laughs 
at the puny efforts of men to resist his authority 
and thwart his purpose, and holds them all in quiet 
derision, and then by the word of his mouth, by 
the tone of his voice, sends fright and confusion 



14 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

into the ranks of his enemies, and moves on un- 
hindered and undisturbed to the accomplishment 
of his fixed and unalterable design. 

What is that design which rulers and nations 
had conspired to defeat ? What is that divine pur- 
pose which has aroused such concentrated and vio- 
lent opposition among men ? 

Jehovah himself is now represented (ver. 6) as 
appearing upon the scene, and uttering his voice 
in the presence of the silenced multitude, calmly, 
distinctly, emphatically announcing his eternal pur- 
pose, against which the combined hostility of men 
should have no power to prevail. 

" Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of 
Zion" (ver. 6). This is God's answer in person to 
his enemies. The "I" is emphatic. Men may 
plot, princes may conspire, the nations may op- 
pose, but /, the Almighty, the Sovereign of heaven 
and earth, have set my anointed King, my Son, 
upon the throne, / have done it, and no power 
on earth can annul or set aside my action. Christ 
is King. Our Christ is the anointed, the enthroned 
of God. He may be despised and rejected of men ; 
he may come to his own and his own receive him 
not ; he may be scourged and spit upon, crowned 
with thorns, and robed in mock purple ; he may 
be crucified, and classed with thieves, and covered 
with dishonor in the eyes of the world, his kingly 
authority laughed to scorn and his royal claims 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 5 

treated with contempt ; yet God says, / have ex- 
alted him to the throne of the universe. "/ have 
set him upon my holy hill of Zion." 

This does not denote any local enthronement, 
any literal exaltation to the throne of David, but 
rather a spiritual coronation, as will be seen from 
the next verse. It is that to which Peter referred 
on the day of Pentecost, when he said : "God hath 
made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, 
both Lord and Christ," l and also in his Epistle 
when he wrote, "The stone which the builders dis- 
allowed, the same is made the head of the corner," 2 
and the same thing to which Paul referred in his 
sublime words to the Philippians : 3 "Wherefore 
God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a 
name which is above every name : that at the name 
of Jesus ever knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth, and things under the 
earth ; and that every tongue should confess that 
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father." 

We sometimes forget, when we think of the 
apparently slow progress of Christ's kingdom 
among men, and the immense amount of opposi- 
tion and darkness that still obstructs- the way, and 
come together in our little companies to sing 

And crown him Lord of all, 
1 Acts 2 : 36. 2 1 Peter 2:7. 3 2 : 9-1 1. 



1 6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

that our Saviour is already on the throne, exalted 
to regal authority and power, placed and sus- 
tained there by the eternally fixed purpose and 
pledged almightiness of Jehovah. It is not now a 
hope, a possibility, a prophecy ; but it is a realiza- 
tion, an accomplished fact, a glorious achievement, 
beyond the possibility of failure. Christ went 
from the cross and the tomb to the throne of uni- 
versal empire. 

And now a new speaker appears upon the scene, 
and this is none other than the Anointed Son, who 
boldly asserts his divine authority, and proclaims 
the nature and universality of his kingdom (ver. 
7, 8, 9). " / will declare the decree [that is, the 
official counsel and instruction which he had re- 
ceived of the Father] : the Lord hath said unto me, 
Tlwu art my Son ; this day have I begotten thee. 
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for 
thine inJieritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a 
rod of iron ; thou shalt dash tliem in pieces like a 
potter's vessel." 

Wellhausen, in a note on this passage, in the 
Polychrome edition of the Bible, makes the follow- 
ing remarkable comment : 

The Messiah is the speaker. It is not merely the hopes 
concerning the future to which he gives expression ; it is 
the claims to world-wide dominion already cherished by the 
Jewish theocracy. All the heathen are destined to obey the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS \J 

Jews ; if they fail to do so, they are rebels. The Messiah 
is the incarnation of Israel's universal rule. He and Is- 
rael are almost identical, and it matters little whether we 
say that Israel has or is the Messiah. 

This note expresses the author's view, if we under- 
stand it, that the psalm does not necessarily point 
to a personal and individual fulfillment, and that 
the Messiah may be nothing more than the Jewish 
nation, a view which will find little acceptance 
among biblical scholars. The language of the note 
is confusing, and its apparent interpretation of the 
passage is unnatural. We turn from it with satis- 
faction to the plain and authoritative interpretation 
of an inspired apostle. 

The remarkable words, "Thou art my Son, this 
day have I begotten thee," mean, as we learn from 
Rom. i : 4 and Acts 13 : 33, "this day have I de- 
clared and manifested thee to be my Son by in- 
vesting thee with thy kingly dignity and placing 
thee on thy throne" ; and the day referred to was 
the day when God raised Christ from the dead. 
In the Epistle to the Romans Paul asserts that 
Christ was "declared to be the Son of God with 
power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the 
resurrection from the dead " ; and in Acts also, the 
language, "this day have I begotten thee," is re- 
ferred to that culminating act of Christ on earth, 
and the crowning article of the Christian faith, his 
glorious resurrection. Herder says : "The three 

B 



15 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

luminous points of a heavenly attestation of the 
anointed of God are the baptism, the transfigura- 
tion, and the resurrection." It is impossible to 
find in these words of the psalmist a prophecy of 
Christ's return to some earthly throne. His resur- 
rection day was his coronation day. He is already 
crowned. He is now "set down at the right hand 
of the throne of God," dispensing grace and judg- 
ment, and guiding the affairs of his advancing 
kingdom. He reigns not by the will of men, not 
by the suffrages nor by the sufferance of men, but 
by the infinite grace and promulgated decree of 
Jehovah. And his kingdom is to be no limited, 
mountain-defined, ocean-bound territory, is to be 
confined to no single people or continent or hemi- 
sphere, but is to embrace the uncounted millions 
of heathen and the uttermost parts of the earth. 
These remotest lands, by whatever peoples inhab- 
ited, by whatever superstitions darkened, by what- 
ever sins infested, are to become Christ's inheri- 
tance and possession. Authority is given to him 
to break those who will not bend, and to destroy 
those who will not submit. With a rod of iron 
will he break them, and dash them in pieces like 
a cracked and worthless piece of pottery. The 
royal Son of God sits upon his throne, holding in 
one hand the promise of universal dominion, and 
in the other the iron sceptre of his righteous rule. 
This is the picture which the psalm presents, not 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 9 

the picture of the man of sorrows, not the picture 
of a suffering Messiah, but the photograph of an 
almighty Conqueror and world-wide King, who 
will subdue by his resistless power, where he can- 
not conquer by his princely love. It is dominion, 
far-reaching, universal dominion, that has been 
promised to the Messiah, and dominion, far-reach- 
ing, universal dominion, that he will ultimately 
have — the conditions and results being determined 
by the dispositions and conduct of individual men, 
when entreated to acknowledge his supremacy and 
become the subjects of his spiritual kingdom. 

Objection has been made to the warlike tone of 
this psalm, as well as of the one hundred and tenth 
Psalm. But it must be remembered that " David 
was a warrior from his youth, and it was natural 
for him to predict the conquests of the Messiah." 
Of the positive Messianic character of both of 
these brief but remarkable psalms, Dr. Richard G. 
Moulton says : 

In two psalms we have the full Messianic conception ; 
the Lord's Anointed is exalted (Ps. 2) over the whole 
earth in spite of the vain opposition of earthly rulers ; 
again (Ps. no) Jehovah bids his chosen sit at his right 
hand until his foes have become his footstool, while he is 
exalted King over the nations, priest forever after the order 
of Melchizedek. 

Once more the voice of the psalmist is heard, 
pleading with men, in view of what has been said, 



20 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

to desist from their wicked rebellion, and wisely 
submit to the righteous rule of him whom Jeho- 
vah has proclaimed King (ver. io, n, 12). "Be 
wise now therefore, ye kings : be instructed, ye 
judges of the earth [the influential leaders and in- 
stigators of rebellion]. Serve the Lord with fear, 
and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he 
be angry, and ye perish in your way, for soon will 
his wrath be kindled. Blessed are all they that put 
their trust in him" 

This is the language of a man pleading with his 
fellow-men, who are capable of listening to reason 
and receiving instruction. It is the language of a 
brother pleading with his kinsmen, whom he sees 
engaged in a wicked and hazardous undertaking. 
It is the language of God's inspired prophet plead- 
ing with the creatures whom he has made, to 
desist from their disobedience and opposition, to 
lower the flag of their hostility, to ground the 
arms of their rebellion, to surrender at once and 
unconditionally, to become the loyal subjects of 
him who is their Maker, their almighty Sovereign, 
and their righteous Judge. No language could be 
more faithful or more tenderly persuasive. It may 
be briefly paraphrased thus : O men of the high- 
est as well as of the lowest rank, act wisely ; be 
not deaf to the voice of wisdom ; abandon your 
insane resistance of God ; enlist in his joyful serv- 
ice ; acknowledge him whom he has anointed King 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 21 

of kings and Lord of lords ; place upon his sin- 
less, royal brow, no, not there, for sinful lips may 
not touch such ineffable glory, but upon his pierced 
and bleeding hand, the kiss of humble submission 
and loving devotion ; and do it quickly, before it 
shall be too late ; wait not till his punitive wrath 
shall be kindled against you, but escape its con- 
suming flames by the surrender of a trusting and 
loyal heart, and into it shall come the peace of his 
acceptance and the blessedness of his salvation. 
For blessed, unspeakably blessed, are all they that 
put their trust in him. 

Such is the great world-drama, as it has been writ- 
ten by the pen of inspiration, and such are the dra- 
matis personce. What great truths does this pro- 
phetic psalm especially emphasize and set forth? 

1. We must not overlook that important truth, 
so impressively taught, viz, the folly and danger of 
all sin against God. Sin is rebellion, and every 
man who sins willfully is a rebel against the divine 
government. Every act of disobedience is an act 
of rebellion, and the very essence of anarchy. It 
is a blow struck at immutable and eternal right, 
at the foundations of the moral universe, at the di- 
vine sovereignty. No such rebellion, it is obvious, 
can succeed, and every man engaged in it has only 
this choice, penitence or penalty. 

2. But the psalm is almost entirely prophetic, 
and was intended to set forth the person and dig- 



22 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

nity of the Messiah, and the triumph of his king- 
dom on the earth. Christ is King, put upon the 
throne by God himself, and established there by 
his almighty decree, the recognized Son of God, 
and his vicegerent on earth, to be honored and 
acknowledged as such by all men who would not 
be found opposing God. God's hand has put the 
crown upon his brow ; let no human hand presume 
to take it off. 

3. The kingdom of the Messiah, that is, of 
Christ, is to be universal. In spite of the infidelity 
and organized opposition of men, in spite of the 
inactivity and unfaithfulness of his disciples, his 
dominion is to embrace all nations and all men. 
All religious systems, however hoary with age, and 
however deeply rooted in the customs and faiths of 
men, are to go down before the onward march of 
Christian truth. The dark unbelief of the world 
of every shade, animism, heathenism, naturalism, 
materialism, agnosticism, deism, is to disappear be- 
fore the bright shining of the Sun of righteousness. 
Myriads of hearts, now dumb, shall join in sing- 
ing Christ's coronation hymn, and myriads of 
hands, now unwilling, shall help to crown him 
"Lord of all." 

This world is Christ's world. He formed it by 
his creative power. He has purchased it by his 
redeeming grace. He has been enthroned as its 
rightful Sovereign. He shall yet come into full 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 23 

possession of it. Its forces, its literatures, its life, 
its civilizations, its populations shall be his on 
every continent and remotest island of the sea. 
"The heathen for his inheritance and the utter- 
most parts of the earth for his possession." Upon 
this infallible promise, this divine assurance, we 
send forth our missionaries and preach the gospel 
to every creature. In the words of another : 

Christ shall yet take possession of the things he has 
made. The steam and the lightning shall yet do his bid- 
ding ; learning shall lay all its laurels at the feet of him who 
is the absolute truth and the infinite wisdom ; art shall 
learn a heavenlier beauty when kneeling before the ' ' alto- 
gether lovely ' ' ; great cities and lands now filled with vio- 
lence shall be filled with his praise ; the ancient capitals of 
civilization shall renew their former glories when he is glo- 
rified, and Jerusalem, now lying a broken diadem beneath 
the morning shadows of Olivet, shall be builded anew to 
the honor of him who was once crucified without her 
ancient gate. The City of God which St. Augustine cele- 
brated is to descend upon all the homes and the institutions 
of men. Thy walls shall be salvation and thy gates praise. 
Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon 
destroy itself, for the Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and 
the days of thy mourning shall be ended. 

4. Such positive revelations of the personal glory 
of the Messiah, and resistless power and world- 
wide dominion suggest corresponding duties and 
obligations on the part of men. It is the dictate of 
wisdom for every moral being to whom the knowl- 



24 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

edge of this once foretold but now historic Messiah 
has come, to submit immediately to the great Son 
of God, the world's King and Saviour. It is wiser, 
infinitely wiser, to seek his favor than to incur his 
wrath, to accept his grace than to brave his power, 
to be enlisted with him and for him rather than 
against him in the conflict which is going on in the 
world between good and evil, between righteous- 
ness and unrighteousness, between Christ and his 
foes — a conflict which can have but one issue. To 
kiss the divine Son in humble submission and loving 
loyalty is every man's immediate duty and highest 
privilege and only safety. 

5. It is, moreover, the imperative duty of those 
who have acknowledged the Messiah, who have 
submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ and crowned 
him supreme in their affections, to imitate the exam- 
ple of the inspired psalmist, and to appeal to men 
everywhere, " Be wise, be instructed, cease your 
opposition, serve the Lord, kiss the Son, yield to 
the Sovereign of your souls," and to show by their 
strong faith, their cheerful devotion, their enlarged 
generosity, their glad and hopeful spirits, their pure 
and godly lives, how " blessed are all they that put 
their trust in him." 



CHAPTER II 
PSALM XXII 



II 

This psalm has been uniformly re- 
Psalm XXII , j r . u Tvr • • 
garded as one of the Messianic 

psalms, that is, as pointing forward to Christ, not 

only in a general way as the supreme Sufferer, but 

in a very particular and minute manner referring 

to events connected with the crucifixion of the 

Saviour. 

The reasons for this belief are three. First, 
Jewish writers have understood it to be Messianic, 
that is, those of them who have admitted that their 
coming Messiah was to be a sufferer, have reckoned 
this psalm as one of the prophetic passages in their 
Holy Scriptures which foreshadowed the character, 
the condition, and the mission of their expected 
deliverer. 

What Dr. W. A. Scott has said in "The Christ 
of the Apostles' Creed," in reference to the fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah, is equally applicable to this 
psalm : 

It is confessed by the most ancient Jewish authorities that 
this prophecy does relate to the Messiah. And so plainly 
does it suit the character of Jesus that it has long been con- 
tended by some Jewish rabbis that two Messiahs are prom- 
ised in their sacred books, one to redeem and suffer and 

27 



28 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

another to reign as a glorious Prince. A sufficient answer 
to this is, that such an interpretation of the old Hebrew 
Scriptures is clearly an invention, for the purpose of getting 
rid of the testimony of the sacred writers to Jesus as the 
promised Messiah. We are not able to find a syllable in 
support of it from the beginning of Genesis to the end of the 
book of Revelation. Moses and the prophets and the 
psalms know nothing of two Messiahs ; but they do speak of 
one Messiah, who was both to suffer and die and to triumph, 
to be humbled and to be exalted, to be clothed with human- 
ity and yet to wear the robe of immortality and of ineffable 
majesty. 

A second reason for believing this psalm to be 
Messianic is, that its language, while partially true 
of human sufferers and human situations, is fully 
applicable only to the divine Sufferer and the cir- 
cumstances of his death. Expressions are used in 
the psalm which have no known or natural or pos- 
sible fulfillment outside of the Christ of Calvary. 
To those who are familiar with the record of the 
life and passion of the Son of God, the language of 
the psalm harmonizes perfectly with the inspired 
historic narrative. 

And the third, and the strongest and conclusive 
reason for accepting the psalm as a Messianic 
prophecy is, that Christ and the writers of the New 
Testament in their use of it declare it to be such 
with the utmost positiveness and assurance. The 
language of the psalm not only harmonizes with 
the historic narrative, but it is actually found in the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 20, 

historic narrative. It has been chosen to describe 
the sufferings of Christ and the particular events of 
his crucifixion. Unless we are ready to surrender 
all faith in the inspiration of the writers of the New 
Testament, and more than that, unless we are ready 
to abandon all faith in the authority of Christ him- 
self, we must accept this Messianic application of 
the psalm. 

This does not prevent, however, some local ap- 
plication and some partial fulfillment, if we can de- 
termine what it is. It is not infrequently the case 
that divine prophecies which find their perfect 
and adequate and intended fulfillment in Christ, 
have a local meaning and reference. They are 
history made sublimely typical and prophetic, 
human experience made doubly significant and 
sacred, because the Son of God became our 
brother, and took upon himself our nature and en- 
tered into our sorrows and griefs, human experi- 
ences finding their larger meaning and purpose in 
his experiences, who was tempted in all points like 
as we are, yet without sin, and who gave his life a 
ransom for many. 

The difficulty in the case of this psalm, as of 
some others, is to determine its local application 
and make its minute descriptions apply accurately 
to any contemporaneous event or experience. Ac- 
cording to the inscription, this psalm was composed 
by David. That is the traditional belief of its au- 



30 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

thorship, though we have not, as in the case of the 
second Psalm, the distinct assertion of the New 
Testament to that effect ; but even De Wette was 
compelled to confess that nothing decisive could be 
urged against this view. 

There is, however, no known circumstance in the 
life of David to which the psalm is especially ap- 
plicable. It can be said that "in none of his per- 
secutions by Saul was he ever reduced to such 
straits as those here described." Calvin was led to 
suggest the explanation that David gathered up 
into one bitter experience the whole story of his 
persecutions and sufferings, an explanation wholly 
unsatisfactory. Delitzsch truthfully remarks : 

David's description of personal experience in suffering 
goes far beyond any that he himself had known, his com- 
plaints descend into a lower depth than he himself had 
sounded, and his hopes rise higher than any realized re- 
ward. Through this hyperbolical character the psalm be- 
came typico-prophetic. David, as the sufferer, there con- 
templates himself and his experience in Christ, and his own 
present and future both thereby acquire a background which 
in height and depth greatly transcends the limits of his own 
personality. 

Some have supposed that the psalm was pro- 
phetic of the sufferings of the children of Israel to 
be endured in their exile, they being personified as 
a single sufferer. And still others, of late, in order 
to get rid of the reality of supernatural prophecy, 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 3 1 

have placed the date of the psalm after the exile 
and regarded it as a history of the sufferings of that 
national experience. Against these views there are 
most serious objections. 

The psalm contains descriptive language which 
does not fit into any real or supposable experience, 
personal or national, in the history of Israel. The 
language is too broad, and at the same time too 
particular, too comprehensive, and at the same time 
too specific. Whoever he may have been, "we must 
not," says Perowne, "narrow the application of the 
psalm to the circumstances of the original sufferer. 
It has evidently a far higher reference. It looks 
forward to Christ. It is a foreshadowing of him 
and of his passion, and arguing from the analogy 
of the sixteenth Psalm, we might even say a con- 
scious foreshadowing." (That is, the writer of the 
psalm was himself conscious that its real, its sub- 
lime fulfillment was yet to come in him toward 
whom the hope, the expectation, the desire of 
God's ancient people was ever turning with devout 
longing.) " He who thus suffered and prayed and 
hoped in the land of his captivity might have seen 
by the eye of faith that Another, far mightier than 
he, must also suffer and be set at naught of the 
heathen and rejected of men, that through him 
salvation might come to the Gentiles." 

For this thought, which is the great central 
thought of the gospel of Christ, finds expression in 



32 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the midst of this picture of extremest suffering, viz, 
that the sufferer should not go unheard nor his 
sufferings be disregarded. "For he hath not de- 
spised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, 
neither hath he hid his face from him ; and when 
Jie cried unto him, he heard" ; and that through 
that suffering, by means of Christ's strong crying 
and tears, as the result of the Saviour's agony and 
death upon the cross, the salvation of God should 
be preached successfully to all nations ; or, as the 
psalm has it : "All the ends of the earth shall re- 
member and turn unto Jehovah, and all the families 
of the nations shall worship before thee. ' ' 

This psalm, then, brings before us the great fact 
that the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, was to 
be a conspicuous sufferer, was to be scorned and 
despised by men, and in some hour of bitter con- 
sciousness was to be forsaken by God. The second 
Psalm sets before us the regal character of Christ, 
his exaltation by Jehovah to the throne of power, 
his coronation by his resurrection, his irresistible 
might, his world-wide triumph, his universal do- 
minion. Its prophetic intimations, for the most 
part, still await their fulfillment. The New Testa- 
ment writers were stirred by the same strong faith, 
and repeated the same clear prophecies, which 
every revolution of the earth around the sun or 
upon its axis is rolling on to their literal and glori- 
ous realization. But the coming fulfillment of these 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 33 

prophecies and our faith in the same are dependent 
upon the past fulfillment of other prophecies which 
pertained to his earthly manifestation, his humilia- 
tion, his sufferings, his death upon the cross. " Be- 
cause he took upon him the form of a servant, and 
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross, therefore God hath 
highly exalted him, and given him the name which 
is above every name." There is no slightest hope 
that the prophecies of Christ's blessed and univer- 
sal empire will ever be fulfilled except as we believe 
that the prophecies of his humiliation and atoning 
death have already been fulfilled. Why do we be- 
lieve in the glad triumph of Christianity ? Because 
we believe that there were prophecies pertaining to 
the sufferings of Christ which came to pass. Both 
the suffering and the glory are matters of prophecy. 
The cross has been, therefore we are confident that 
the crown shall be. The kingdom and the glory 
rest upon the same prophetic foundation as did the 
humiliation and the shame. To deny the prophe- 
cies in reference to the lowliness, the suffering, the 
vicarious sacrifice of Christ, is to destroy all confi- 
dence in the coming of his blessed reign and the 
hope which, as Christians, we cherish in the prog- 
ress of society and the redemption of the world. 

The prophetic picture is complete, and covers 
both aspects of Christ's person and condition — 
Christ the Sufferer and Christ the Conqueror, 



34 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Christ the Victim and Christ the King, the human 
manifestation and the divine nature, the humiliation 
and the exaltation, the weakness and the power, 
the shame and the glory, the cross and the throne, 
the pitiful and distressing loneliness and the ever- 
lasting fellowship and oneness with God. 

It is undoubtedly true that the picture of the 
Messiah portrayed in the Old Testament seems 
especially accurate to us who look upon it in the 
light of its accepted fulfillment The Jews of 
Christ's time had, for the most part, come to 
cherish very faulty conceptions of the person and 
mission of their promised Messiah. To them he 
was to appear in power and royal state and estab- 
lish a visible kingdom. The lamentation of the 
two disciples, in the shadow of their terrible disap- 
pointment at his crucifixion, voiced the sentiment 
of the people generally. "But we trusted that it 
had been he which should have redeemed Israel." 
Their interpretation of prophecy was determined 
in no small degree by the condition of the nation 
as a subject province of the Roman Empire. The 
nature of the Jewish expectation and the difficulty 
of eradicating it from the minds of the early disci- 
ples prove the absurdity of the mythical theory of 
the origin of the Gospels. Doctor Plumptre has 
well said, in the "Boyle Lectures" for 1866 : 

A Christ cunningly devised to meet the yearning expecta- 
tions of Israel would have lived a far other life and died a 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 35 

far other death than the Christ of Nazareth. In whatever 
degree we, taught by facts, may recognize in prophecies and 
foreshadowings the lineaments of a suffering Messiah, in 
whatever measure he may have learned from them the pat- 
tern to which he must conform himself, nothing can be 
clearer than that such an ideal was infinitely distant from 
the minds of the Jewish people. Priests, scribes, peasants, 
publicans would have alike shrunk from it. "Christ cruci- 
fied" was "to the Jews a stumbling-block." What we are 
required to believe is, that they accepted a my thus because 
it contradicted their expectations. The credo quia impossi- 
bile is forced upon us where we should least have looked 
for it. 

As has been said, the writer of this psalm gives 
to us the distressing picture of a lonely sufferer. 
It may be to some extent his own portrait ; but it 
gives to us also, centuries in advance, the easily 
recognized, the unmistakable picture of the scenes 
of Calvary, with its cruel and unsympathetic and 
mocking crowd, and its helpless and forsaken Man 
of Sorrows. It undoubtedly had some reference 
to the experience of the psalmist, though what we 
cannot tell ; but he looked forward to another Suf- 
ferer, who should give reality and vividness, pathos 
and power, to his words and fill them out to their 
minutest detail. 

The following words are quoted from Neander : 

Under these pangs of soul and body he sees before him 
the Holy One, persecuted, mocked, proved in the bitterest 
sufferings, yet steadfastly trusting in God, as described in 



36 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the twenty-second Psalm ; and the idea, as delineated by 
the inspired psalmist, was realized — not only in itself, but 
in the minutest traits of its delineation also — in hi?n, who 
stood among men as the only Holy One, not only exhibit- 
ing the ideal of holiness in conflict and suffering, but tri- 
umphing through them. 

The seventh verse, " All they that see me laugh 
me to scorn ; they shoot out the lip, they shake the 
head" finds its counterpart in the narrative of the 
crucifixion, 1 " And they that passed by reviled him, 
wagging their heads." 

On these words Meyer remarks, thereby con- 
firming the quotation and endorsing the applica- 
tion, "Not as a sign of disapprobation, but according 
to Ps. 22 : 8, a gesture of passionate and malignant 
joy." 

The eighth verse, " He trusted on the Lord that 
he would deliver him ; let Jiim deliver him, seeing 
he delighted in him" is repeated almost word for 
word in Matt. 27 : 43, and though quoted by the 
enemies of Christ, is an unintentional confirmation 
of his Messiahship. 

The intense thirst described in the fifteenth verse 
is actualized in the agonizing experience of our 
Saviour as described in John 19 : 28, where we are 
told that Christ had actually in mind this prophetic 
passage and its fulfillment, " Jesus knowing that all 
things were now accomplished, that the Scripture 
1 Matt. 27 : 39. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS $? 

might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst" ; and also another 
prophetic passage, found in Ps. 69 : 21, "They gave 
me also gall for my meat ; and in my thirst they 
gave me vinegar to drink." Another has said with 
clear discrimination, " The thirst was natural ; the 
expression of it was another intimation of his desire 
to fulfill all that God had purposed." 
Godet says : 

The object of Jesus in saying, " I thirst," was really to 
give occasion to the accomplishment of this last unfulfilled 
incident in the Messiah's sufferings, "They gave me vine- 
gar to drink." . . Unquestionably Jesus had for a long time 
been tormented with thirst. This was one of the most 
cruel tortures of crucifixion. But he might have been able 
to restrain, as he had done up till now, the expression of 
that painful sensation. If he does not do so, it is that the 
last incident of the humiliations to which he was to submit 
may take place without delay. 

The specific and peculiar prophecy contained in 
the eighteenth verse, " They part my garments 
among them, and east lots upon my vesture" found 
an accurate, unconscious, and unmistakable fulfill- 
ment, as recorded in John 19 : 23, 24 : "Then the 
soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his 
garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a 
part ; and also his coat : now the coat was without 
seam, woven from the top throughout. They said 
therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but 
cast lots for it, whose it shall be : that the Scripture 



38 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my 
raiment among them, and for my vesture they did 
cast lots," an incident which must have made a 
profound impression upon all the writers of the 
Gospels, for all record it as a remarkable iden- 
tification of Christ with the foretold Messiah, 
Matthew also saying distinctly, " That it might be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet" 

Godet, calling attention to the remarkable literal- 
ness of the fulfillment of this prophecy, remarks : 

It is a great humiliation to the prisoner to see his gar- 
ments parted. Thereafter he may well say there is nothing 
left him but to die. But what humiliation greater than to 
see lots drawn for his garments and so to become like a 
worthless plaything. David wished to describe these two 
degrees, and John remarks that in the sufferings of Jesus 
both of them are literally reproduced ; not that the fulfill- 
ment of the prophecy depended on this detail, but it came 
out the more clearly ; and that, above all, because every- 
thing was done by the instrumentality of the rudest and 
blindest agents, the Roman soldiers. On this last idea 
John wishes to lay stress when he concludes the recital of 
the scene with the words, ' ' These things therefore the sol- 
diers did." The Roman governor had proclaimed Jesus 
The King of the Jews ; the Roman soldiers, without mean- 
ing it, indicated him to be the true David. 

In like manner Farrar says : 

Little dreaming how exactly they were fulfilling the mystic 
intimations of olden Jewish prophecy, they proceeded there- 
fore to divide between them the garments of Jesus. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 39 

However much some modern interpreters may 
dispute the reality of prophecy and the Messianic 
character of these ancient Scriptures, the writers 
of the New Testament, under the illumination of 
the divine Spirit, believed in them fully and im- 
plicitly, and found in these apparently accidental 
circumstances the beautiful and accurate fulfillment 
of specific declarations which otherwise would have 
had no meaning whatever, and the verification of 
Christ's claims as the long-promised Messiah and 
the appointed Redeemer of the world. Moreover, 
Christ himself is represented as acting in the light 
of prophecy and consciously in the minutest de- 
tails bringing to pass the intimations of God's an- 
cient servants. The -mocking crowd, with their 
wagging heads, the quoted words of derision, the 
expression of extreme and unendurable thirst, the 
offered vinegar, the seamless tunic over which the 
soldiers gambled at the foot of the cross, what are 
all these but so many indisputable evidences that 
"holy men of old spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost," and that their words, whether 
uttered five hundred or fifteen hundred years be- 
fore Christ and his crucifixion, were converged and 
focused in the fullness of time in burning splendor 
in the life and sufferings of our divine Lord. 

Moreover, if the translation in verse sixteenth, 
"They pierced my hands and my feet," is correct, 
and according to Perowne the weight of critical 



40 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

authority favors it, it refers distinctly to the nailing 
of Christ to the uplifted cross. It may be said at 
this point that the Gospel narratives tally so closely 
with this psalm that later Jewish writers charged 
the Christian penmen with shrewdly and dishon- 
estly constructing their records with this Messianic 
scripture in mind so as to carry conviction, if pos- 
sible, to the hearts of those who refused to ac- 
knowledge Jesus as the Messiah. 

Strauss goes so far as to make the unwarranted 
suggestion that when the' Messianic pretensions of 
Jesus had been falsified by his crucifixion, the early 
Christians searched the Old Testament for the con- 
ception of a suffering Saviour, and then created 
the incidents of the crucifixion to harmonize with 
their interpretation of such passages as Ps. 22 and 
Ps. 69. 

It should be noticed that at the twenty-second 
verse the tone of the psalm is suddenly changed. 
It is not now the cry of suffering and distress, but 
the shout of glad confidence and the assurance of 
victory and universal blessing. It is as if the suf- 
ferings of the sufferer were now at an end, and not 
only so, but as if they had accomplished their pur- 
pose, and through them world-wide peace and pros- 
perity had been secured, and the nations of the 
earth had been brought back to the worship and 
service of the one true God. The transition is 
deeply significant and the language is most remark- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 4 1 

able. Another has said : " The sufferer, now de- 
livered, sees that both his agonies and his release 
will be productive of perfect satisfaction to himself, 
of eternal benefit to his brethren of mankind, and 
of the highest glory to God." We are reminded 
of those other inspired words, " He shall see of the 
travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." 1 

Moreover, the twenty-second verse is quoted by 
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 2 as re- 
ferring distinctly to Christ and his intimate re- 
lation to his people : " / will declare thy name 
unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will 
I praise thee." This frequent reference in the New 
Testament of the language of the psalm to Christ, 
the peculiar severity and vicarious nature of the 
sufferings depicted, and the universal spiritual re- 
sults of those sufferings determine beyond question 
the Messianic character of this psalm. Of what 
other sufferer, however exalted his rank or how- 
ever extreme his sufferings, can it be asserted, with 
any degree of fitness or truthfulness, that as a con- 
sequence of his suffering, "All the ends of the 
world shall remember and turn unto Jehovah, and 
all the families of the nations shall worship before 
thee. For Jehovah's is the kingdom ; and he ruleth 
among the nations.'" 

Another has said : 

1 Isa. 53 : 11. 2 2 : 12. 



42 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

It will always be difficult to demonstrate that some un- 
known righteous man in the Old Testament could hope, as 
the author of Ps. 22 does, that the effect of his deliver- 
ance would be the conversion of Gentile peoples and the 
establishment of the kingdom of God to the very ends of 
the earth. 

The language of Krummacher 1 is so just and 
sympathetic in its interpretation of this psalm that 
it is worthy of extended quotation : 

The portrait of a guiltless sufferer gradually increases to 
a sublimity which has found its perfect antitype in the holy 
Jesus. In the picture, features appear of which we meet 
with only slight traces in David' s history, and which, there- 
fore, call upon us to seek their literal fulfillment elsewhere. 
For the sufferer in the Psalms is not only represented as the 
offscouring of the whole world, not only do those who see 
him say to him, "He trusted in the Lord that he would 
deliver him ; let him deliver him, seeing that he delighted 
in him," not only must he agonizingly exclaim, "I am 
poured out like water ; all my bones are out of joint, and 
thou hast brought me into the dust of death," but he must 
also see what David never experienced, that his hands and 
feet were pierced, and that his enemies parted his garments 
among them and cast lots upon his vesture. 

Besides this, his passion ends in such a manner as no 
other man' s sufferings ; for a glorious crown of victory at 
length adorns the head of this tried and faithful One. Yea, 
he receives the testimony that his sufferings shall result in 
nothing short of the salvation of the world, and the restora- 
tion, enlightening, and beautifying of the Gentiles. Who 
is so blind as not to perceive that this just man, who is so 

1 "The Suffering Saviour," pp. 414, 415. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 43 

sorely tried, and who comes forth so triumphantly from the 
conflict, as depicted by the Spirit in this twenty-second 
Psalm, is no other than the promised Messiah in the per- 
son of Jesus of Nazareth ? This is beyond a doubt, even 
if the New Testament had not expressly given that psalm 
such an application. Even one of the champions of 
modern infidelity, prophesying like Balaam, has called the 
twenty-second Psalm "the program of the crucifixion of 
Christ ' ' ; and another, against his will, is carried away to 
use these words : "One might almost think a Christian had 
written this psalm." 

I have reserved for consideration last the re- 
markable language of the first verse of the psalm, 
viz : " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me?" language which Christ solemnly repeated 
when suffering the agony of the cross. The psalm- 
ist may have found some occasion or occasions in 
his checkered life, when it seemed to him that God 
had forgotten him, just as in the intervening ages, 
and possibly to-day, there may be some of God's 
children, who in the midst of life's extremities and 
burdens are tempted to feel that God has utterly 
withdrawn from them his presence and sympathy 
and aid, and abandoned them to the unpitying 
power of adverse circumstances or to the cruel tor- 
ture of a relentless fate. 

But that Christ, the holy Son of God, should 
have used these words, " My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" is doubly significant, as 
bearing conclusively upon the Messianic character 



44 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

of the psalm, and as revealing also the nature, pur- 
pose, and extent of the suffering which our Saviour 
endured in our behalf. 

Another has beautifully said, it is "not the why 
of impatience or despair, not the sinful question- 
ing of one whose heart rebels against his chasten- 
ing, but rather the cry of a lost child, who cannot 
understand why his father has left him, and who 
longs to see his father's face again. . . What these 
words were in the lips of the Holy One of God, 
heart of man may not conceive. For a moment, 
in that last agony, the Perfect Man was alone, alone 
with the sin of the world." 

Ah, is not that the secret of the exclamation which 
burst from the Saviour's lips ? Innocence forsaken 
by God ! Spotless purity abandoned by the Spirit 
of the All-Holy ! Absolute sinlessness and unim- 
peachable moral excellence under the displeasure 
of the Almighty ! How can we account for this 
abnormal and distressing fact, except upon the 
basis of the revealed truth — Christ's mysterious 
fellowship with sin in his suffering and death ? At 
that supreme moment of his mission on earth he 
felt the awful shadow of sin's curse, which is eter- 
nal separation from God. " He was made to be 
sin for us, who knew no sin." " He bore our sins 
in his own body on the tree." Christ in that hour 
of extremest suffering alone with sin, your sin and 
my sin and the sin of the world ! Who can com- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 45 

prehend the meaning of the words, " My God, my 
God, Avhy hast thou forsaken me?" Oh, unutter- 
able agony ! Oh, unspeakable grace ! 

The mythical theory of Strauss, that these words 
of the psalm were, after the crucifixion, put into 
the lips of Christ, has no rational basis. Neither 
is the view of Paulus, Schleiermacher, and Hase 
satisfactory, or in harmony with the distinctively 
prophetic character of other language in the psalm, 
viz, that these words used by Christ were simply a 
" lamentation expressed in a scriptural statement^ 
showing that he had the whole psalm, with its sub- 
lime conclusion, before his mind." The words were 
obviously Messianic as uttered by the psalmist, and 
pointed forward to a definite experience of sorrow 
which the Redeemer of mankind was to have, 
when he took upon himself human guilt in that 
final act of expiation. We may not measure the 
abyss of the anguish, but we are not left in doubt 
as to its cause. And this spiritual suffering (not 
the thirst or the pain from the bodily wounds) was 
the supreme thought of the prophecy as it was the 
supreme significance of the crucifixion. The uni- 
form evangelical interpretation has been well ex- 
pressed by Dr. James Stalker in these words : 

Not only did the world' s sin thus press itself on his lov- 
ing and holy soul in those near him ; it came from afar, 
from the past, the distant, and the future, and met on him. 
He was bearing the sin of the world ; and the consuming 



4.6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

fire of God' s nature, which is the reverse side of the light 
of his holiness and love, flamed forth against him, to 
scorch it away. . . These were the sufferings which made 
the cross appalling. . . He hung long silent amidst the 
darkness without and the darkness within, till at length, out 
of the depths of an anguish which human thought will 
never fathom, there issued the cry, "My God, my God, 
why hast thou forsaken me ? " It was the moment when 
the soul of the Sufferer touched the very bottom of his 
misery. 

It was the moment too, when the cross of Christ 
came into relation to the guilt and need of the 
whole race. Therefore let the faith, the penitence, 
the love of every human heart find expression in 
the famous hymn of Bernard of Clairvaux : 

O sacred Head, now wounded, 

With grief and shame weighed down, 
Now scornfully surrounded 

With thorns, thine only crown ; 
O sacred Head, what glory, 

What bliss, till now was thine ! 
Yet, though despised and gory, 

I joy to call thee mine. 

What thou, my Lord, hast suffered 

Was all for sinners' gain ; 
Mine, mine was the transgression, 

But thine the deadly pain ; 
Lo, here I fall, my Saviour ! 

'Tis I deserved thy place ; 
Look on me with thy favor, 

Vouchsafe to me thy grace. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 47 

What language shall I borrow 

To thank thee, dearest Friend, 
For this, thy dying sorrow, 

Thy pity without end ? 
O make me thine forever ; 

And should I fainting be, 
Lord, let me never, never, 

Outlive my love to thee. 



CHAPTER III 
PSALM CX 



Ill 



This psalm, though one of the short- 
Psalm CX L . c\iT 4. i ui 
est, is one of the most remarkable 

of the inspired hymns of the Jewish Scriptures. It 
is a poem of wonderful beauty and of striking 
imagery, and bears conspicuously upon its surface 
its Messianic application. Indeed, it seems to be a 
prophecy of the person and office of Christ, and 
the glory and triumph of his kingdom, from begin- 
ning to end. Some psalms have in them scattered 
verses which refer to the coming Messiah, to some 
aspect of his character, some event in his life, or 
some characteristic of his reign. This psalm is en- 
tirely referable to Christ. Some psalms have, first, 
a local and contemporary application, and then a 
fuller and prophetic application to One who was to 
come. This psalm seems to refer clearly, dis- 
tinctly, and only to the future Priest-King of the 
Jewish nation and of the world. 

This exclusive reference of the psalm is advo- 
cated by Oehler and others. Oehler says : 

In Ps. 2, 45, 72, no, a royal personage is depicted, to 
whom neither David nor Solomon corresponds, but only he 
of whom they were types. There are two schools of inter- 
pretation with regard to these psalms. The one, repre- 

5i 



52 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

sented by Calvin, holds that, in the first instance, they refer 
to a king of Israel, but that the ideal predicates affirmed of 
him refer to Christ. The other school holds that the 
psalmist had before him the ideal theocratic king, and so 
spoke directly of Christ. This last view cannot be set aside 
by the objection that the psalmist could not sing of a future 
king, for he does sing of a future glory of the holy city 
(Ps. 87), and the future advent of Jehovah to establish his 
kingdom (Ps. 96-98). This view seems to be decidedly 
the more natural in Ps. 2, 72, no. 

This psalm resembles the second Psalm in its 
ascription to Christ of regal rank and divine charac- 
ter, of irresistible power and world-wide victory ; 
but it is differentiated from it in some important 
particulars. Not only is Christ's kingly and divine 
character proclaimed in it, but also his priestly or 
sacerdotal character. The psalm consists of two 
parts. The first part begins with an affirmation of 
Christ's universal sovereignty, and the second part 
begins with an affirmation, confirmed by a solemn 
oath, that Christ was to be invested in perpetuity 
with the functions of a universal priesthood. More- 
over, this psalm has the positive acknowledgment of 
Christ, both as to its Davidic authorship and its 
application to himself, and also that David, when 
he composed the psalm, was under the distinct 
guidance and inspiration of the Spirit of God. In 
Mark 12 : 35-37 we are told that " Jesus answered 
and said, while he taught in the temple, How say 
the scribes that Christ is the son of David ? For 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 53 

David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord 
said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I 
make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore 
himself calleth him Lord ; and whence is he then 
his son ? " The scribes acknowledged only the 
human nature and descent of the Messiah, that he 
was a descendant of David. Christ proved to 
them, out of their own Scriptures, that David 
himself acknowledged his divinity, and that he did 
it when speaking under the influence of the Holy 
Spirit. His quotation of the first verse of this 
psalm, and the manner of it, obviously claims 
its application to himself as the Messiah, and is 
evidence of his belief that the psalm was written 
by David, whose name is attached to it, and to 
whom it has been 'almost universally ascribed, and 
also that the psalmist in making these revelations, 
and similar ones, about the Messiah who was to 
come, was aided and controlled by the Spirit of 
God. The language is peculiarly plain and posi- 
tive. " David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The 
Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand." 
Any other interpretation seems to be a palpable 
contradiction of the meaning of Christ's words, and 
a clear violation of all the laws of language, and at 
the same' time a reflection upon Christ's wisdom or 
moral sincerity or upon both. 

Dr. W. N. Clarke states the case clearly and 
fairly, when he says, in his " Commentary on Mark," 



54 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

concerning this passage (Ps. 1 10 : I, quoted exactly 
from the Septuagint) : 

Jesus here affirms (i) that David was the author of it 
His use of it turns upon this fact ; and thus he assents to 
the title that stands above the psalm, both in the Hebrew 
and the Septuagint. (2) That David made this utterance 
"in the Holy Spirit." This can mean only that the utter- 
ance was not solely David' s own, but was made under an 
inspiration of the Spirit of God. No theory of inspiration 
is given here, but the fact is expressly stated. (3) That the 
passage was Messianic. Not for himself, 1 any more than 
of himself 2 did David say this. It. was one of those for- 
ward-looking utterances that found their full meaning only 
in him who was to come. 

The importance of this psalm and the influence 
of Christ's interpretation of it upon the Christology 
of the early church can hardly be overestimated. 
Doctor Clarke says further : 

The passage, thus brought by the Lord himself to its ap- 
plication, took a powerful hold upon the faith and imagina- 
tion of the church, and entered into the formation of doc- 
trine. 3 Here, however, the argument of Jesus turns on the 
word Lord, and implies [asserts] the divinity of the Mes- 
siah. David' s son would be a man ; but this Son of David 
was to be one whom David could also call his Lord. More 
than man, therefore, he must be. This is a warning that 
the scribes have their ideas of the Messiah still to mend and 
to conform to the teaching of the Scriptures. 

1 I Peter I : 12. 2 2 Peter I : 21. 

3 See Acts 2 : 34-36 ; I Cor. 15 : 25 ; Eph. I : 20 ; Col. 3:1; 
Heb. 1 : 3 ; 8 : I ; IP : 12 j 12 : 2 ; I Peter 3 : 22. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 55 

If there were no other reference to this psalm in 
the New Testament than this one by Christ, which 
is recorded in each of the first three Gospels, this 
one reference would be enough to establish the in- 
spired character of the writing and its true Messi- 
anic import. But there is no psalm that is referred 
to so often in the New Testament Scriptures in 
proportion to its length as this. 

The first verse : " The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
thy footstool" is quoted by Peter in his great 
sermon on the Day of Pentecost, a sermon which 
carried conviction to the minds of three thousand 
hearers. The aim of Peter's discourse was two-fold : 
first, to show that the great miracle of Pentecost 
was the fulfillment of specific prophecy; and 
secondly, to prove that Jesus who had just been 
put to death, was the foretold Messiah. It was 
addressed mainly to " the men of Judea," and was 
an appeal to their own Scriptures, to prove that 
Jesus of Nazareth, a man " approved of God by 
miracles and wonders and signs," had been cruci- 
fied and raised from the dead according to the 
well-known teachings of their own inspired proph- 
ets, prophetic teachings which could not have been 
in any sense fulfilled in the writers themselves. 
" For David is not ascended into the heavens " ; 
but on the contrary, disclaiming all personal refer- 
ence to himself in his words, and distinctly deter- 



56 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

mining their application, " he saith himself, The 
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right 
hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool." Peter's 
argument is based upon David's confession. 
"Therefore let all the house of Israel know as- 
suredly, that God hath made this same Jesus, whom 
ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." 

Here, then, we have the inspired apostle's inter- 
pretation of the meaning and intent of the words 
of the inspired psalmist, whom he calls " the patri- 
arch David," and also his own positive declaration 
that the ancient prophecy was fulfilled, when God 
raised Jesus from the dead. Then he was "de- 
clared to be the Son of God with power," as Paul 
says, and exalted to God's right hand, that is, to 
a share in the government of the universe, in the 
supreme executive functions of the Almighty, until 
all enemies of Christ and truth and righteousness 
shall be brought into subjection to him. It is evi- 
dent from the language of the psalm, and also from 
the interpretation of Peter, that a permanent dig- 
nity and glory is here meant, a dignity and glory 
not less than that of God himself. The same truth 
is affirmed by Paul * in similar language, " God also 
hath highly exalted him, and given him a name 
which is above every name, that at the name of 
Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue 

1 Phil. 2 : 9-1 1. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS $? 

confess that he is Lord [not to the disparagement 
or dishonor but], to the glory of God the Father.'' 
Perowne says : 

If, then, this be the meaning, if the solemn address, 
"Sit thou at my right hand," is equivalent to saying, " Be 
thou associated with me in my kingly dignity, in my power 
and universal dominion," then the best comment on the 
passage is to be found, as even some of the Jewish inter- 
preters have seen, in Dan. 7 : 13, 14, where " one like the 
Son of man comes with the clouds of heaven, and is 
brought unto the Ancient of days. . . and there is given him 
dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, 
nations, and languages should serve him." 

The two passages, the one from the psalm and the 
one from Daniel, are in fact combined by our Lord 
himself, when standing before the high priest he 
says : " Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sit- 
ting on the right hand of God, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven." 

This language of the psalm, expressive of the 
exalted dignity and prospective universal triumph 
of the Messiah, is again and again used in reference 
to Jesus in the New Testament. In Ephesians 1 
it is written : " According to the working of his 
mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when 
he raised him from the dead, and set him at his 
own right hand in the heavenly places, far above 
all principality, and power, and might, and domin- 

1 1 : 20-23. 



58 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

ion, and every name that is named, not only in 
this world, but also in that which is to come : and 
hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to 
be the head over all things to the church," that is, 
even him who is thus exalted and glorified above 
all beings in all worlds, hath the Father, in his 
boundless mercy, given to be the head of the church. 

In Hebrews 1 we are told that Christ " for the joy 
that was set before him, endured the cross, despis- 
ing the shame, and is set down at the right hand of 
the throne of God," where the language of the 
psalm is plainly used. 

In I Cor. 15 : 25 we are told that Christ "must 
reign, until he hath put all enemies under his feet ; 
the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," 
language which is borrowed from David's psalm in 
reference to the universal supremacy of Christ 
among men, and then is expanded to include, in 
addition to all human foes and human opposition, 
those spiritual enemies, which array themselves 
against the peace of God's children and the holy 
tranquillity of their life, "the last of which is 
death." 

And then in the first chapter of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews the writer, in showing the supreme 
excellence of the Christian dispensation over the 
past, and the vast superiority of Christ, whom he 

1 12 : 2. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 59 

calls Son of God, maker of all worlds, brightness 
of the divine glory and the express image of God's 
person, over all the angelic order of beings, ex- 
claims triumphantly in concluding his argument : 
" But to which of the angels said he at any time, 
Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies 
thy footstool,' " as God did say to Jesus the Mes- 
siah, as you will find recorded in the one hundred 
and tenth Psalm of David ? This is the culminat- 
ing point of the writer's argument, and its force 
rests upon the universal acknowledgment of his 
hearers that this psalm referred to the Messiah, and 
that there was only one being in all the universe 
so high, so exalted, so powerful, so divine, that 
its language was applicable to him, and that being 
was David's Son and David's Lord. 

But not only is that part of the psalm which 
declares the regal dignity of the Messiah quoted 
in the New Testament by Christ and Peter and 
Paul as applicable to our Lord, but in like manner, 
that part which declares his priestly character and 
office is quoted several times in the fifth, sixth, and 
seventh chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
and forms a main point in the argument of the 
writer that Christ's priesthood was superior to the 
Aaronic priesthood, and his sacrifice was of infi- 
nitely more value than all the sacrifices of the past, 
both in its intrinsic efficacy and as being the end 
of the whole sacrificial system, begun by Abel and 



60 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

continued down through all the intervening cen- 
turies. This Epistle was written to the Hebrews, 
and presents a thoughtful and irresistible argument 
based upon the Hebrew Scriptures, that their 
priests and their offerings found their highest mean- 
ing and fulfillment in him who was the great High 
Priest of the new dispensation and offered himself 
as the one sufficient and acceptable sacrifice for 
the sins of the whole world. 

The inspired writer, in proving that the priest- 
hood of Christ was far loftier and more glorious 
than any that had preceded it, referred to the 
priesthood of that remarkable man who suddenly 
and mysteriously flashed into view in the life of 
their great patriarch Abraham, and about whom 
and whose priesthood the Jews acknowledged that 
there was much that was unique and sublime, and 
repeating over and over again the declaration of 
their own inspired psalm reminded the Jews that 
Melchizedek was but a type of the Messiah, and 
that Jesus was the one to whom both the type and 
the prophetic utterance pointed. In the fifth chap- 
ter (ver. 4-6) the writer affirms that Jesus was ap- 
pointed by God to both the kingly and priestly 
office, and quotes in proof of the first the language 
of the second Psalm, " Thou art my Son, to-day 
have I begotten thee," and in proof of the second, 
the language of the one hundred and tenth Psalm : 
" Thou art a priest forever after the order of Mel- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 6 1 

chizedek." In the sixth chapter (ver. 20) the 
writer quotes the same words again as having refer- 
ence to Jesus, " Whither the forerunner is for us 
entered, even Jesus, made a high priest for ever 
after the order of Melchizedek," in which the 
entrance of Jesus into the unseen world and the 
perpetuity of his intercessory work there are made 
the basis of the Christian's immortal hope. And 
in the seventh chapter (ver. 1-3) the story of the 
meeting between Abraham and Melchizedek is told, 
and some of the remarkable things about Mel- 
chizedek are spoken of, viz, his two-fold name, 
King of Righteousness and King of Peace, his 
mysterious origin and disappearance, " without 
father, without mother, without pedigree, having 
neither beginning of days, nor end of life," and 
the uninherited and untransmitted nature of his 
priesthood, and then it is significantly added, he 
was "made like unto the Son of God" ; in these 
points of resemblance he, more than the Levitical 
priests, was the true type of the Saviour of the 
world. And again, twice in this same chapter (ver. 
17, 21) the language of the psalm is quoted to 
show the superiority of Christ's priesthood, first, 
because of his eternal existence — it was " not after 
the law of a carnal commandment, but after the 
power of an endless life." "Thou art a priest for 
ever" and secondly, because it was confirmed and 
established by the immutable oath of the Almighty, 



62 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

" The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a 
priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." 

I know of no better or clearer explanation of 
the thought and intent of the psalmist than that 
given by Dr. R. W. Dale : 

In the Psalms an inspired writer fixes on the underived 
and untransmitted and royal priesthood of the king of 
Salem as the highest representation of the priesthood of the 
Messiah ; and just as the kingship of a Jewish monarch is 
sometimes described, in the same book, in language which 
passes, by imperceptible gradations, into a vision of royal 
grandeur and authority which no earthly prince could ever 
possess, so the priesthood of Melchizedek is idealized and 
exalted until it transcends in dignity and permanence the 
measures of a merely human ministry. * ' Thou art a priest 
for ever after the order of Melchizedek." The priesthood 
of Melchizedek, because of its peculiar characteristics, is 
employed to denominate the everlasting priesthood of the 
Messiah. As priest of the Most High God, the Canaan- 
itish king stood apart from all the consecrated descendants 
of Aaron, deriving his dignity from none, transmitting it to 
none ; his royal priesthood was the noblest visible approach 
to the everlasting priesthood of the Son of God ; and the 
psalmist therefore speaks of Christ as belonging to the same 
priestly order, and as fulfilling the idea which in the priest- 
hood of Melchizedek was represented in an inferior form. 

This interpretation is abundantly confirmed by the 
inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He 
saw in the psalm the most distinct and indisputable 
evidence that it was a divinely prophetic utterance 
pointing to Jesus Christ. Christ in his discussion 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 63 

with the Jews had had occasion to speak of the first 
part of the psalm, that is, the ascription of regal and 
divine dignity, as referable to himself. The writer 
of this Epistle declares that the second part, that is, 
the bestowment of a universal and eternal priest- 
hood, is also applicable to Christ. Indeed, in the 
tenth chapter (ver. 12, 13), by a remarkable com- 
bination of words he claims the whole psalm as per- 
taining to Christ and foretelling both his kingly and 
his priestly characters, and the relation between 
them : " But this man, after he had offered one 
sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right 
hand of God ; from henceforth expecting till his 
enemies be made his footstool." 

We find, then, that this short psalm of seven 
verses is referred to no less than nineteen times in 
the New Testament as being an inspired prophecy 
fulfilled in Jesus Christ, eleven times by the writer 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he may be 
believed to have been ; by Paul in the Epistles to 
the Romans, 1 Ephesians, 2 and Colossians, 3 and in 
First Corinthians ; 4 by Peter on the day of Pente- 
cost, and also in his First Epistle, 5 and by Christ 
himself on two different occasions. 6 Such an 
accumulation of testimony, gathered from such 
sources, ought to leave students of the Bible in no 
doubt as to the inspiration and Messianic import of 

1 8 : 34. 2 1 : 22. 3 3 : 1. 

4 15 : 25-27. 5 3 : 22. 6 Mark 12 : 36 ; 14 : 62. 



64 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

this beautiful, striking, and sublime Hebrew poem. 
Doctor Alexander says : " The repeated, explicit, 
and emphatic application of this psalrh in the New 
Testament to Jesus Christ, is so far from being 
arbitrary or at variance with the obvious import 
of the psalm itself, that any other application is 
ridiculous." 

But we must not overlook the convincing inter- 
nal evidences that this is the character and import 
of the psalm. I have said that it bears conspicu- 
ously upon its surface its Messianic application. 

First, David, whom we believe, on the authority 
of Christ and his apostles, to be the author of the 
psalm, acknowledges the subject of the psalm to 
be his Lord. " Jehovah said unto my Lord." This 
he would not have done if he had looked upon him 
as being simply his natural successor to the throne. 

Secondly, no earthly king can by any possible 
use of language, or by any stretch of the imagina- 
tion, be said to sit on the right hand of Jehovah, 
sharing his dignity and his supreme dominion. 
This can only be true of the Son of God, of whom 
it is said that to him every knee shall bow and 
every tongue confess that he is Lord. 

A third internal evidence that this psalm must 
refer to Christ, is found in the fact that the subject 
is represented as a king and at the same time as a 
priest, combining in one person the regal and the 
sacerdotal offices. He was "a priest for ever after 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 6$ 

the order of Melchizedek," a royal priest invested 
with a perpetual priesthood. No Jewish kings were 
ever priests of the temple. The priestly class was 
a distinct class. 

And a fourth internal evidence that Christ, and 
only Christ, can be the subject of the psalm, is that 
all the followers of this Priest-King are represented 
as themselves priests, clad in holy vestments, en- 
gaged in a spiritual warfare, and that his victory is 
to be complete and his reign universal. This pre- 
cludes the possibility of any other application ex- 
cept to our Saviour-King. It sets before us the 
great truth of the universal priesthood of all be- 
lievers in him, and also the ultimate conquest of 
the world in his name. Such a spiritual warfare 
and such a glorious triumph are the things which 
characterize the blessed reign of the Lord Jesus 
Christ on earth, and pertain only to his kingdom. 

Professor C. H. Toy expresses his opinion of the 
non-Davidic authorship and late date of this psalm 
and the authority for it in the following comment 
upon the fourth verse : 

But what differences the thought of the psalm from that 
of similar ones (as Ps. 2, 45, and 72) is the statement of 
our verse, that the king was at the same time a priest. This 
requires us to look for a period in Jewish history when one 
man united in his person the royal and sacerdotal offices, 
. . . and we know of no time when such a condition of 
things existed but the Maccabean. 

E 



66 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

In order to escape the purely prophetic character 
of the psalm, and its direct and exclusive reference 
to the Messiah, Professor Toy is compelled to bring 
the date of the psalm down to the Maccabean 
period, and thereby disputes the testimony of 
Christ as to its Davidic authorship. That such 
was Christ's testimony he frankly acknowledges. 
Speaking of Christ's language, he says : " Here 
David cannot, as is sometimes the case; be under- 
stood as a vague name for the book of Psalms, but 
must mean the individual man so-called." In other 
words, Christ believed that David was the author of 
the psalm, and so declared. Therefore his ascrip- 
tion of the psalm to David is pronounced by Doctor 
Toy to be untrue. It is not an attempt to excuse 
Christ on the ground that he spoke in a general, 
impersonal way, or that he simply acquiesced in 
the popular belief as to the authorship of the psalm ; 
but it seems to be a plain denial of the veracity of 
Jesus Christ. 

Dr. Franklin Johnson makes answer to Doctor 
Toy's view as follows : 

Our Lord ascribes the psalm to David, and there is abso- 
lutely no reason to call the Davidic authorship in question. 
As Alexander has said, it is corroborated by the internal 
character of the composition, its laconic energy, its martial 
tone, its triumphant confidence, and its resemblance to 
other undisputed psalms of David. The effort is made to 
bring the psalm down to the Maccabean age, not on the 
ground that its language is of this later age, but on the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 6j 

ground that we might hope to find a Jewish king at that 
time who was also a priest, to whom it could be said : 
"Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek." 
. . . The Maccabees were indeed priests by legal descent ; 
but the psalm speaks of one who was to be priest not by 
legal descent, not after the order of Aaron, but by extra legal 
title, "after the order of Melchizedek." Besides, of whom 
but of Christ could it be said, « * Thou art a priest for ever ' ' ? 
Thus on every ground the psalm must be regarded as re- 
ferring to our Lord directly. 

Edersheim, speaking of the use which Christ 
makes of this psalm, expresses his opinion of its 
authorship, date, and Messianic character in no un- 
certain language. He says : 

Without addressing any one in particular, he put to them 
all what perhaps was the most familiar subject of their the- 
ology, that of the descent of Messiah. Whose son was he ? 
And when they replied, "The Son of David," he referred 
them to the opening words of Ps. no, in which David 
called the Messiah "Lord." The argument proceeded, of 
course, on the two-fold supposition that the psalm was 
Davidic and that it was Messianic. Neither of these state- 
ments would have been questioned by the ancient synagogue. 
But we could not rest satisfied with the explanation that this 
sufficed for the purpose of Christ's argument if the founda- 
tion on which it rested could be seriously called in question. 
Such, however, is not the case. To apply Ps. no, verse 
by verse, and consistently, to any one of the Maccabees, 
were to undertake a critical task which only a series of un- 
natural explanations of the language could render possible. 
. . . For our own part, we are content to rest the Messianic 
interpretation on the obvious and natural meaning of the 



68 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

words taken in connection with the general teaching of the 
Old Testament about the Messiah, on the undoubted inter- 
pretation of the ancient Jewish synagogue, on the authority 
of Christ, and on the testimony of history. 

Wellhausen assigns still another reason for the 
late date of the psalm, which needs only a mo- 
ment's consideration. He says : "The comparison 
with Melchizedek brings the date of the psalm 
very low, because the narrative in Gen. 14 is of 
extremely late origin." Such a conclusion will 
have little weight with those who utterly disbelieve 
his premise, especially, as we have seen, since the 
whole New Testament is arrayed against it. 

The analysis of the psalm is briefly as follows : 

In the first two verses the Messiah is represented 
as taking his appointed place at the right hand of 
Jehovah, and clothed with power to subdue all na- 
tions to himself. Indeed, he is acting in alliance 
with Jehovah. "Jehovah shall send the rod of thy 
strength out of Zion" ; that is, the scepter of thy 
might and thy kingly majesty, Jehovah shall stretch 
it forth out of Zion. 

In the third verse the Messiah assembles his 
hosts for the strange battle. They come together 
under his banner as free-will offerings, and are as 
numerous as the drops of morning dew and as 
beautiful as they, glistening in their garments of 
holiness. It is an exceedingly poetic figure. Old 
men and matrons, young men and maidens, appear 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 69 

filled with the freshness and vigor of an eternal 
youth, and all clothed with the shining robes of 
their holy and priestly character. Milton bor- 
rowed this figure in his description of the angelic 

hosts 

Dewdrops which the sun 
Impearls on every leaf and every flower. 

In the fourth verse the Messiah is proclaimed a 
perpetual priest, under the immutable oath of the 
Almighty, whose might is that of sacrificial love, 
who is to bear the sins of the world and to make 
atonement for human guilt ; a kingly priest and a 
priestly king, the only supreme Pontiff of peni- 
tent and believing souls. " And I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me." 

In the remaining three verses of the psalm the 
inspired penman gives us the picture of the final 
and utter conquest of all enemies of the Messiah. 
It is the picture of a battlefield after the battle is 
over. Those who have persisted in their opposi- 
tion to the bitter end, and have not bowed to the 
scepter of his mercy, are made to fall under the 
rod of his power. Kings and leaders are unable 
to stand before his onward march. Those who are 
exalted in human power and sinful pride are made 
to bite the dust. He goes from victory to victory, 
pursuing his routed enemies, as unexhausted as he is 
irresistible, ever renewing his strength as the war- 
rior who drinks of the brook by the way, and is 



JO THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

perpetually refreshed for the conflict, until the last 
trace of opposition has utterly disappeared. 

The central and emphatic thought of the psalm 
is undoubtedly the two-fold aspect of the character 
and mission of Jesus Christ, his regal dignity and 
his priestly work. To fail to apprehend either, is 
to miss his true glory and his saving power. On 
the one hand, we are taught that Christ "bore our 
sins in his own body on the tree," and on the 
other hand, that "the kingdoms of this world are 
to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his 
Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever." True 
faith must accept Christ as the propitiation for all 
sin, and must place heart and mind and being at 
the feet of Christ, and "crown him Lord of all." 
Both conceptions are finely presented in the fa- 
miliar hymn of Doctor Watts : 

Now to the Lord, who makes us know 

The wonders of his dying love, 
Be humble honors paid below, 

And strains of nobler praise above. 

' Twas he who cleansed our foulest sins, 
And washed us in his precious blood ; 

'Tis he who makes us priests and kings, 
And brings us rebels near to God, 

To Jesus, our atoning Priest, 

To Jesus, our superior King, 
Be everlasting power confessed, 

Let every tongue his glory sing. 



CHAPTER IV 
PSALM XVI 



IV 

This psalm gives to us the beautiful 
a expression of the soul's choice of 

God and delight in him, of its repudiation of all 
other worship and devotion to his service, of its 
comfort and satisfaction with the lot assigned to it 
by divine Providence, and its perfect rest in his 
promised help and protection, both for this life 
and the life to come, in all possible emergencies, in 
the darkness of death and the grave, and impliedly 
in the revealing fires of the judgment day. It be- 
gins with a confession of weakness and need '• 
"Preserve me, O God: for in tliee do I put my 
trust." It ends with a shout of victory : " Thou 
wilt not leave my soul in sheol ; neither wilt thou 
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." It be- 
gins with the acknowledgment of God as the 
source of all good and satisfaction here : " My good 
is naught outside of thee;" and it concludes with 
the confident declaration that with God there is 
the consummation of all joy and felicity, which 
shall be without end : " In thy presence is fulness 
of joy ; at thy right hand there are pleasures for 
evermore." 

Ewald says of this psalm: 

73 



74 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

There is hardly to be found a clearer or more beautiful 
declaration concerning the whole future of the individual 
man than this. For the calm glow of the highest inner ex- 
pansion and serenity here lifts the poet far above the future 
and its menaces, and it stands clearly before his soul that 
in such continued life of the spirit in God there is nothing 
to be feared, neither pains of the flesh, his body, nor 
death ; but where the true life is, there also the body must 
finally come to its rest ; because deliverance also of the 
soul from the grave is possible through him who wills only 
life. 

There are no words within the limits of the Old 
Testament that remind one so much as the last 
verses of this psalm of the ringing conclusion of 
the Apostle Paul's elaborate argument for the res- 
urrection in the fifteenth chapter of First Corin- 
thians : "For this corruptible must put on incor- 
ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 
. . . Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

It is sometimes said, it seems to us most unac- 
countably, that the doctrine of immortality is not 
taught in the Old Testament Scriptures. It is in- 
credible that a people which had been preserved 
by God in its monotheistic faith, and had been for 
centuries under the tuition of his prophets, should 
be an exceptional people in this important particu- 
lar. The Egyptians believed in it, and had their 
conspicuous symbols of their faith. Heathen na- 
tions have had invariably some conception of the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 75 

continued existence of the soul after death. Cicero 
wrote concerning the soul's immortality. Plato 
gave special prominence to the doctrine of future 
rewards and punishments. Buddhism may teach 
the annihilation of personality, but not of life, in 
its mysterious dogma of Nirvana. Aboriginal peo- 
ples, the most savage and degraded, have looked 
forward to the happy hunting grounds of another 
sphere of existence. And all men everywhere 
have felt the irresistible longing of the soul, and 
the uniform prophecy which springs spontaneously 
from the sense of the incompleteness of its present 
life. Moreover, to say that God's ancient people 
did not believe in the future existence of the soul, 
is to say not only what seems utterly incredible, 
but what seems to be disproved by any candid in- 
terpretation of their sacred books. Modern Jews, 
with no other accepted source of instruction than 
the Old Testament, have believed to a man in the 
doctrine of immortality. It is not, indeed, taught 
so fully, and with such clear emphasis, in the Old 
Testament as by Him who said, 'Tarn the resur- 
rection and the life," and "he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live," and who is 
declared to have come "that he might bring life 
and immortality to light in his gospel." But it is 
nevertheless taught by the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures impliedly from beginning to end, and dis- 
tinctly and clearly in instances not a few. 



^6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

It is, indeed, true as Dr. George A. Gordon 
says: 

It is because the prophets stand for moralism of the pro- 
foundest and most august order, that they lay foundations 
so broad and strong for faith in the permanence of the hu- 
man soul. They involve so completely human existence 
and interest with the Divine existence and interest that the 
idea of the essentialness of humanity to God becomes al- 
most inevitable. God is sublimely implicated in the his- 
tory, experience, and destiny of Israel, and ultimately in 
the life of the race ; hence that life must go on while God 
goes on. This is the aspect under which the Hebrew 
prophets view the life of their people, and to some extent, 
the life of the world. . . Human existence takes on, in the 
estimation of these seers, a character so vast and grand 
that it instantly becomes a sublime prophecy on its own 
account. 

This is the unequaled merit of Hebrew delineation in its 
highest forms. It finds the reality of life, discovers the char- 
acter of human existence, and makes that speak for itself. 
As it was with the multitudes before whom Jesus stood 
when Pilate said, ' ' Behold the man ! " so it is with sym- 
pathetic students, when the Hebrew prophet says, "Be- 
hold human life ! " It may be outraged by condition, dis- 
figured by evil treatment, covered with the emblems of 
mockery, and crowned with shame, yet is there something 
divine and awe-inspiring in it, and its silence and patience 
become a mute but mighty prophecy of a hereafter of honor 
and power. 

If there were no distinct enunciation of a per- 
sonal immortality in the earlier books of the Bible, 
the doctrine would nevertheless be there as an 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 77 

atmosphere, as a great undertone, as an implied 
and inevitable truth, as well of man as of God. 
The conception of human life given there is too 
grand, too vast, too sublime, to find its only sym- 
bols in the shadow, the flower, and the motion of 
a weaver's shuttle. Under the moral teachings of 
these old prophets, and in the light of the revealed 
interest of the Almighty, human life takes on far- 
reaching proportions ; the soul of man is seen to 
be immortal by reason of its sublime worth and 
dignity and relation to the infinite and eternal 
Spirit. 

But the distinct enunciations of immortality are 
by no means wanting in this elder revelation to 
ears that are willing to hear them. They come to 
us in the tones of Job and Isaiah and David, as 
well as in the translation of Elijah, expressing a 
clear and positive faith in a life beyond this, in 
language which we of this new and completer dis- 
pensation do not hesitate to borrow as fully ade- 
quate to express our belief in the continued exist- 
ence of the soul. As the function of the prophet 
was largely ethical, and the function of the psalm- 
ist was primarily spiritual and religious, we should 
expect to find the latter more frequently speaking 
of the devout faith of the soul in the reality and 
blessedness, the completeness and glory of the life 
beyond this. And such is the fact, as seen in such 
precious and familiar words as these : "I shall be 



yS THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." ''Thou 
shalt guide me with thy counsel and after receive 
me to glory." " Thou wilt not leave my soul in 
1iell y nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. 
Thou wilt shew me the path of life : in thy pres- 
ence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand titer e are 
pleasures for evermore. ' ' 

The last verses of this psalm, as we shall soon 
see, have a special and peculiar reference to Christ, 
and so catalogue the psalm among the Messianic 
and prophetic scriptures. The psalm is not like 
Ps. no, which refers exclusively and solely to the 
coming Messiah, whose very language, as well as 
the testimony of Christ and his apostles, seems to 
forbid any other application. This psalm has in it 
much that grew out of the experience of the 
psalmist, and that is common to all of God's peo- 
ple whose lives are lived on a high level of relig- 
ious faith and spirituality. It must be confessed 
that its language presents a standard and an ideal 
which are all too infrequently reached by Chris- 
tians of our time, notwithstanding the superior 
light and privileges which we enjoy. The man 
who could truthfully give expression to his attain- 
ments in religious life and faith in these words 
would seem like a veritable spiritual giant, while 
the most of us would seem like pigmies at his 
side. To clothe our little faith, and feeble spiritual 
life, and puny experiences with the language of the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 79 

psalm would be like a little child attempting to put 
on the splendid jeweled dress of the queen, worn 
at a royal reception. The appearance of extrava- 
gance and overstatement in Scripture language is 
too often the result of the sad immaturity of our 
Christian experience. We apply to some remote 
saint of Bible times, or possibly interpret as only 
prophetic of the ideal person and life of the Mes- 
siah, words which ought to be the truthful and 
well-fitting expression of our every-day spiritual 
faith and joy, peace and life in God. 

The Scriptures call all Christians "saints," all 
believers in Jesus Christ, all who openly profess to 
be living the religious life, and not the few who 
have been canonized by a very fallible church. 
We need to grow up to our God-given name, and 
to be developed to the descriptive language of the 
Bible, much of which, instead of applying only to 
Christ and to exceptional believers, should be uni- 
versally applicable and should fittingly set forth 
the spirit, life, and experience of every child of 
God. The ignorant man whb persisted in chang- 
ing the last word of the line of the familiar hymn, 
and always singing it, 

Judge not the Lord by feeble saints, 

was only uttering a necessary warning, if men 
would have correct views of God and religion. 
How many of us are living such exalted expe- 



80 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

riences that we can say, "I have no good outside 
of God, and all my delight is in his people"? 
How many of us find such richness and fullness 
and complete satisfaction in our religion that we 
can say, "Jehovah is the portion of my territory 
and of my cup" that is, He is my satisfying pos- 
session and the daily food by which I live ? How 
many of us have that undisturbed faith in God, 
and that calm and peaceful trust in his wisdom and 
unchanging love amid the hardships, the disap- 
pointments, the losses, the sorrows of life, that we 
can ever sing, " The lines have fallen unto me in 
pleasant places ; yea, I have a goodly heritage." 
How many of us are so steadfast, so unshaken, so 
loyal in our adherence to God and truth and duty, 
that amid the temptations to disobedience and 
widespread apostasy and neglect of covenant obli- 
gations we can affirm at all times, "I have set Je- 
hovah always before me : because lie is at my right 
hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is 
glad, and my glory rejoice th : my flesh also shall rest 
in hope." 

These descriptions of religious life and character 
were undoubtedly true of Christ, the Ideal Man, 
to the very letter. He did say, "My meat is to 
do the will of him that sent me." He did speak 
of the joy and the peace which he had in the 
Father, and which he longed earnestly to impart 
to men. He did submissively say, in an ordeal 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 8 1 

more severe than any other son of man ever 
passed through, "Nevertheless not as I will, but 
as thou wilt." He did assert as the one supreme 
motive of his earthly life, "I must be about my 
Father's business." 

All this language of the psalm was pre-emi- 
nently true of him who lived and loved in Galilee, 
and prophetic of his divine example for the world. 
But thus far the psalm was undoubtedly true in 
some sense of the man of God who wrote these 
words, and ought to be true of the spirit and life 
of every man of God who reads them. This is 
the beautiful picture of a righteous man, of a man 
whose heart is right, who has been brought into 
right relations with God and with his environment, 
who acknowledges his daily dependence upon the 
Infinite Spirit, and has ceased to worry and fret and 
chafe under the yoke of God's providences, in 
which sometimes the unyielding harness seems to 
be all sharp buckles, and not smooth bands. 

The inspired man of God who wrote these 
words was David, who sang out of his own expe- 
rience, and whose skillful fingers have touched and 
caused to vibrate so many of the chords of human 
life all down the ages. The psalm has always been 
ascribed to him. His name appears in the inscrip- 
tion, which, though not inspired, is as worthy of 
confidence as an infidel denial. Moreover, Peter 
and Paul have distinctly told us that David wrote 



82 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

it, and we confidently accept their testimony. It 
was David's psalm, written by his wonderful pen, 
born out of his experience, throbbing with his life, 
ringing with his faith and joy and contentment, 
and bright with present and immortal hope. 

It was David who confessed that he had no pros- 
perity apart from God, and no real comfort apart 
from the fellowship of his people. It was David who 
refused to honor any other deities or be associated 
in their worship. It was David who declared that 
God was his satisfying portion and his inheritance, 
his landed estate and his meat and drink, his abid- 
ing and imperishable wealth and the daily nour- 
ishment of his soul, anticipating the words of Paul, 
"All things are yours, for ye are Christ's, and 
Christ is God's," anticipating the words of Savona- 
rola : "What must not he possess who possesses 
the Possessor of all." It was David who looked 
out upon his earthly lot and declared it to be 
bright with the sunshine of God's love, and that 
his heritage was exceedingly fair to behold, remind- 
ing us of his other words, "Goodness and mercy 
have followed me all the days of my life, and I 
will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Ah ! 
that was what made his heritage so goodly. This 
land in which he dwelt was God's house for his 
body, and yonder soon would be God's house for 
his soul. It was David who acknowledged that it 
was God's wisdom that had guided him in his 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 83 

choice, and had so illuminated his heart that in 
the darkness and silence of the night he could 
hear its words of instruction. It was David who 
proclaimed that he had entered into friendly alliance 
with Jehovah, as against the combined forces of 
evil in the world, that the Almighty was in front of 
him as his shield and at his right hand as his pro- 
tector, aye, that he was his right hand, that God's 
right arm was his right arm ; that God was not a 
dream, or an abstraction, or a God afar off, but a 
real, living person, walking at his side, and there- 
fore he should neither fall nor be felled, but amid 
the temptations and moral upheavals and shocking 
disasters of life he should stand unharmed, immov- 
able, invincible, and having done all should stand. 
It was David who, in the strength of his faith and 
the gladness of his heart, looked out upon the vic- 
torious issue of life, and penetrating the mystery 
that shrouds life's end, the unseen and the un- 
known of death and the grave, calmly said, "My 
flesh also shall rest in hope," or in safety, as the 
Hebrew word means. 

And was it not David who said also for himself 
in some true sense, " Thou wilt not leave my soul 
in the unseen world, neither wilt thou suffer thine 
Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me 
the path of life ; in thy presence is fulness of joy ; 
at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." 
This language, as has been said already, is evi- 



84 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

dently a clear, emphatic, unmistakable declaration 
of his faith in the immortality of the soul. It was 
as if he had heard Christ, the Lord of life, say: 
" Because I live, ye shall live also," and his heart 
cried out in glad response, without a doubt or a 
fear, " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, 
where is thy victory ? ' ' 

But we are taught by men chosen by Christ to 
receive his Spirit, who should lead them into all 
the truth, and should take of the things of Christ 
and show them unto them, that these words were 
to find a literal and more perfect and intended ful- 
fillment in the resurrection of Jesus Christ centu- 
ries later, that the application to David was only 
partial and prophetic, and that David was conscious 
when he wrote the words that he was speaking not 
simply of his own immortality, but of that glorious 
and crowning event of Christ's manifestation on 
earth, which should be at the same time the irre- 
sistible proof of his divine character and mission, 
and the conclusive evidence of the great doctrine 
of the resurrection of us all. 

It is sometimes maintained that the Messianic 
prophecies of the Psalms and of other books of the 
Old Testament are simply " idealizations" of David 
or Solomon, of some eminent character in Jewish 
history, and that the fact and expression of these 
"idealizations" naturally gave rise to the expecta- 
tion that in the future some person, a superior king, 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 85 

or a supreme sufferer, or both in one, would arise 
who should fulfill, that is, fill full or fill out, these 
pictures of the imagination ; and so in the New 
Testament these "idealizations" are regarded as 
prophetic, as Messianic, and Christ is declared to 
be their adequate fulfillment and realization. This 
view is advanced and defended by Rev. C. A. Row, 
in "The Jesus of the Evangelists." He says of 
these Messianic ideas in the Psalms : 

They are chiefly either uttered by David or ascribed to 
him in his character of theocratic king. As such they con- 
tain utterances which are not strictly true of any human 
being. They may be described as David idealized. . . 
These idealizations therefore would naturally produce the 
effect of creating the expectation that there was a King yet 
future in whom they were to receive a more adequate real- 
ization. . . The larger proportion of the Messianic psalms 
contains delineations of the greatness and the holiness of 
the idealized David. But there are psalms which idealize 
David, or at any rate the author who composed them, as a 
sufferer. . . Both these species of psalms are directly re- 
ferred to in the New Testament as prophetic. Their ideal- 
ization is fulfilled in the character of the Jesus therein por- 
trayed. 

This theory presents a naturalistic interpretation 
of the Messianic utterances and of the origin and 
growth of the Messianic idea; but it eliminates 
largely, if not entirely, the supernatural element in 
what is called prophecy, so that prophecy is only a 
hope, a longing, a pleasant dream, a cherished ex- 



86 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

pectation born of the imagination, and not a posi- 
tive assurance and utterance based upon a divine 
illumination. Prophecy becomes no longer proph- 
ecy in the common acceptation of the word. It 
may be difficult to explain how prophets were 
made and what was the method of the operation 
of God's illuminating Spirit. Ideals of greatness 
and glory and possibly of suffering may be sug- 
gested by the Spirit of God, and there be kindled 
in the heart the expectation of a coming realiza- 
tion and fulfillment. David may have been ideal- 
ized, his moral character, the events of his life, his 
kingly state, and his righteous and extended do- 
minion. He himself may have given utterance to 
exalted views of personal character and sublime 
conceptions of life as lived in holy fellowship with 
God, such as were fully realized in Jesus Christ, and 
he may have cherished the fond expectation that 
some day they would have their living fulfillment. 
But all this would not be prophecy in the scriptural 
sense. Such a view falls very far short of an ade- 
quate interpretation of the Messianic scriptures. 
It fails to account for the positive predictive char- 
acter of many of them and for the numerous par- 
ticular specifications which were literally fulfilled in 
Christ. Prophecy is vastly more than idealized his- 
tory or idealized biography. So those believed, 
who, moved by the Spirit of God, originally ut- 
tered it, and so those also believed who, instructed 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS $7 

by the same divine Spirit, have interpreted it for 
us. 

The Apostle Peter, in that wonderful sermon on 
the day of Pentecost, which carried conviction and 
faith to the hearts of a great multitude, among 
whom were the cruciflers of our Lord, speaking of 
Christ's resurrection, said : " Whom God hath raised 
up, having loosed the pains of death : because it was 
not possible that he should be holden of it [not pos- 
sible because of God's plan and purpose which he 
had revealed in his word]. For David speaketh 
concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before 
my face [the quotation beginning with the eighth 
verse of the psalm] ; for he is on my right hand, 
that I should not be moved : therefore did my heart 
rejoice, and my tongue was glad ; moreover also my 
flesh shall rest in hope : because thou wilt not leave 
my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy 
One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to 
me the ways of life ; thou shalt make me full of joy 
with thy countenance. [Peter quotes from the Sep- 
tuagint version.] Men and brethren, let me freely 
speak unto you of the patriarch David [that is, lis- 
ten to me candidly while I show to you ' without 
fear of being thought deficient in any just respect 
to his memory,' that these words could not have re- 
ferred to David, because he was not raised from the 
dead, and therefore did see corruption], that he is 
both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us 



88 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

unto this day. [His sepulchre on Mount Zion was 
well known at that time and remained until the time 
of Hadrian.] Therefore being a prophet [being in- 
spired of God to speak his will, as well as to fore- 
see and declare coming events], and knowing that 
God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the 
fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would 
raise up Christ to sit on his throne ; he, seeing this 
before, spake [intelligently and with a clear pro- 
phetic understanding] of the resurrection of Christ, 
that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh 
did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised 
up, whereof we are all witnesses." 

Peter, speaking upon these verses of the psalm, 
under the guidance of the Spirit of God, distinctly 
affirms that they had their ultimate reference to 
Christ and their literal fulfillment in him and his 
resurrection from the dead ; in other words, that 
they were a divine prophecy of this glorious fact of 
our Christian faith, and that David, being a prophet 
of God, that is, divinely inspired, knew what he was 
discoursing upon when he uttered them, and was 
conscious of their prophetic meaning, knowing that 
God had sworn that he would raise up his lineal 
descendant to sit upon his throne ; he seeing this 
before, that is, foreseeing this very event, spoke of 
the resurrection of the Messiah, that his soul should 
not be left in sheol, neither should his flesh see cor- 
ruption. Indeed, reasoned Peter, David could not 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 89 

have been speaking of himself, for he shared in the 
common lot of humanity. He died and was buried ; 
his body was given over to corruption, and with his 
sepulchre we are all familiar. But not so with this 
Jesus. His body saw no corruption. God, by his 
almighty power, snatched it from decay, in accord- 
ance with his own prophetic declaration. He raised 
him from the dead, and we are all witnesses of the 
sublime fact. 

We are simply unfolding the argument of the 
inspired apostle, which was the means of convert- 
ing three thousand hostile Jews, to whom the Scrip- 
tures had been familiar from their childhood, into 
open believers in Jesus as their foretold Messiah. 

Lange insists upon the double reference of the 
words of the psalmist in the following comment : 

But how are we, in accordance with the opinion of the 
apostle, to understand the prophecy of David psychologi- 
cally ? Did David, who speaks in the first person, and 
therefore really seems to refer to himself, in truth speak, not 
in his own name, but in that of the Messiah ? The psalm 
itself does not furnish the least support for such a view ; 
nor indeed does Peter maintain that David, omitting every 
reference to his own person, spoke exclusively of Christ. 
It is quite consistent with the words and the meaning of the 
apostle to assume that David certainly expressed more im- 
mediately his personal hope of life, founded as it was on 
his close communion with God ; but Peter as certainly as- 
serts emphatically that at the same time David, by virtue of 
the illumination of the Spirit of God which was in him, ex- 
pressed a hope which, in its full sense and meaning, was 



90 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

to be fulfilled, not in himself, but in that Anointed One of 
God, who was promised to him and who was his descend- 
ant and a successor on his throne. 

The Apostle Paul, also, who was a profound stu- 
dent of the Hebrew Scriptures, to whom no modern 
interpreter can hold a candle, and was also the 
recipient of the gift of divine inspiration, in like 
manner quotes this psalm, and also the second 
Psalm, in addressing the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia, 
as referring to the resurrection, the exaltation to 
glory, the eternal existence, the deliverance from 
corruption, the full Messiahship of Jesus. Let us 
recall the remarkable passage found in Acts 13 : 26, 
seq, : "Men and brethren, children of the stock of 
Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, 
to you is the word of this salvation sent. For they 
that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because 
they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the 
prophets which are read every sabbath day, they 
have fulfilled them in condemning him. [It was- 
blind ignorance of the Hebrew Scriptures that led 
to the crucifixion of Jesus. It is to-day a similar 
ignorance that refuses to see their application to 
Christ] And though they found no cause of 
death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should 
be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was 
written of him, they took him down from the tree, 
and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him 
from the dead : and he was seen many days of 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 9 1 

them which came up with him from Galilee to 
Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people. 
And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that 
the promise which was made unto the fathers, God 
hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in 
that he hath raised up Jesus again ; as it is also 
written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this 
day have I begotten thee. And as concerning that 
he raised him up from the dead, now no more to 
return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will 
give you the sure mercies of David. 1 Wherefore 
he saith also in another psalm, 2 Thou wilt not 
suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. For 
David, after he had served his own generation by 
the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his 
fathers, and saw corruption : but he, whom God 
raised again, saw no corruption." 

"The main idea of the clause is," says Doctor 
Hackett, " that David, like other men, had but one 
generation of contemporaries, that he accomplished 
for that his allotted work, and then yielded to the 
universal law which consigns the race to death." 

The words of this psalm, therefore, says Paul, 
were not fulfilled in David, but in Jesus, whom 
God raised from the dead in a miraculous manner, 
and who therefore saw no corruption, whose min- 
istry was neither terminated nor interrupted by his 

1 Isa. 55 -. 3. 2 Ps. 16. 



92 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

death, was not confined to his own generation, but 
was predetermined to be for all generations of men 
down to the end of time, and who by his resurrec- 
tion from the dead was seen to be invested with 
the power of an endless life, and therefore is able 
to save to the uttermost all who put their trust in 
him. 

Paul's statements forcibly remind us of Peter's 
course of argument, but contain an entirely inde- 
pendent use of the language of the psalm. Both 
find in it a clear and unmistakable prophecy of the 
resurrection of the Messiah ; but their point of view 
is different, and their reference to the foretold fact 
of Christ's resurrection is for different purposes. 
Peter shows that on account of the prophecy, since 
the divine purpose cannot fail, it was not possible 
that Christ should be holden by death, he must 
have risen from the grave ; while Paul, accepting 
the resurrection of Christ as evidence of his Mes- 
siahship, declares that through him and the per- 
petuity of his existence, the grace and forgiveness 
of God and eternal life were to be evermore offered 
to men. Moreover, it may be added in the words 
of Doctor Alexander : 

That one discourse is not compiled or copied from the 
other is sufficiently apparent from the difference of form, 
Paul quoting a single verse, and that only in part, of the 
four which Peter had made use of, and connecting that one 
with a passage in Isaiah, not alluded to by Peter, while he 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 93 

passed by the latter' s kindred argument derived from Ps. 
no. All this goes to show the independence of the two 
apostles and their two discourses, but at the same time their 
exact agreement in the exposition of a Messianic prophecy. 

It is pertinent to remark in this connection, that 
among prophecies setting forth the person and mis- 
sion of the coming Messiah, a fact so all-important 
as his resurrection from the dead would not be 
omitted. We should expect that it would have a 
distinct and conspicuous place in the prophetic 
picture, such as it does have in this psalm and in 
Ps. 2. It is impossible to overestimate the effect 
upon the minds of the early disciples of their belief 
in the actual resurrection of their crucified Master, 
or to overestimate the significance of the fact in the 
Christian system. The crucifixion of Christ must 
have seemed to his followers an unspeakable catas- 
trophe. Hope, courage, and faith itself must have 
been buried with him who was laid in Joseph's 
tomb. It was his resurrection, seen in the light of 
divine prophecy and verified by the repeated test 
of their senses, that revived their hope, restored 
and enlarged their faith, and that offers to-day the 
only adequate reason for their heroic propagandism 
and the marvelous victories of the religion of Christ 
in the early, and also in the later, centuries. West- 
cott has well said : 

If we measure what seemed to be the hopeless ignominy 
of the catastrophe by which his work was ended, and the 



94 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

divine prerogatives which are claimed for him, not in spite 
of, but in consequence of, that suffering and shame, we shall 
feel the utter hopelessness of reconciling the fact, and that 
triumphant deduction from it, without some intervening fact 
as certain as Christ' s passion and glorious enough to trans- 
figure its sorrow. 

The brilliant paragraph of Farrar is not a rhe- 
torical overstatement : 

At the moment when Christ died, nothing could have 
seemed more abjectly weak, more pitifully hopeless, more 
absolutely doomed to scorn and extinction and despair, 
than the church which he had founded. It numbered but 
a handful of weak followers, of which the boldest had denied 
his Lord with blasphemy and the most devoted had for- 
saken him and fled. They were poor, they were ignorant, 
they were hopeless. They could not claim a single syna- 
gogue or a single sword. If they spoke their own language, 
it bewrayed them by its mongrel dialect ; if they spoke the 
current Greek, it was despised as a miserable patois. So 
feeble were they and insignificant, that it would have looked 
like foolish partiality to prophesy for them the limited exist- 
ence of a Galilean sect. How was it that these dull and 
ignorant men, with their cross of wood, triumphed over the 
deadly fascinations of sensual mythologies, conquered kings 
and their armies, and overcame the world ? What was it 
that thus caused strength to be made perfect out of abject 
weakness? There is one, and only one, possible answer, 
the resurrection from the dead. All this vast revolution was 
due to the power of Christ' s resurrection. 

The importance and significance of Christ's res- 
urrection are not a whit less to-day than at the 
first, as proclaiming Christ's divine nature, giving 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 95 

validity to his claims, authority to his teachings, 
and efficacy to his atoning death, and establishing 
the supernatural character of the Christian religion. 
It is an essential fact in the Christian faith and an 
essential factor in its influence and its permanence. 
We are not surprised that the inspired psalmist 
foresaw and foretold it. We should' have been 
surprised if so momentous an event had been over- 
looked in his prophetic message. 

It is only necessary to add that the title, " thine 
Holy One," is peculiar. Peter and Paul leave us 
in no slightest doubt as to its reference to Christ. 
We are reminded also of the language of the angel 
of the annunciation to Mary : " The Holy Ghost 
shall come upon thee, and the power of the High- 
est shall overshadow thee : therefore also that holy 
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called 
the Son of God." * And of the expression in Acts 
4 : 27 : "For of a truth against thy holy child 
Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and 
Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of 
Israel, were gathered together" ; and of the applica- 
tion of the same title to Christ in Acts 3:14: " But 
ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired 
a murderer to be granted unto you." 

This psalm, then, is strongly Messianic. It fore- 
told the crowning fact of Christ's early manifesta- 

1 Luke I : 35. 



96 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

tion, which is the supporting pillar of the whole 
Christian system. A recent writer has said : 

Christianity in its ultimate analysis consists of two ele- 
ments, a person and a fact, Jesus and the resurrection. 
Belief in these and confession of these are the condition of 
salvation. * The resurrection is the basis of our acceptance, 2 
the ground of our justification, 3 the source, as it is the stand- 
ard, of Christian living, 4 the highest Christian attainment, 5 
the measure of God' s power in the saints. 6 Without it there 
is no Christianity and no salvation. "If Christ be not 
raised your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. ' ' 

And he might add — without it inspired prophecy 
is yet unfulfilled and inspired history is false. But 
we sing to-day without a tremor or a doubt : 

From the dark grave he rose, 

The mansion of the dead ; 
And thence his mighty foes 

In glorious triumph led : 
Up through the sky the Conqueror rode, 
And reigns on high the Saviour God. 

From thence he' 11 quickly come, 

His chariot will not stay, 
And bear our spirits home 

To realms of endless day : 
There shall we see his lovely face, 
And ever be in his embrace. 

" In thy presence, O Christ, is fulness of joy ; at 
thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." 

1 Rom. io : 9. 2 Rom. 4 : 24. 3 Rom. 4 : 25. 

4 Col. 3:1. 5 Phil. 3 : 10. 6 Eph. I : 19, 20. 



CHAPTER V 
PSALM LXXII 



V 

A noticeable feature of the psalms 
which we have thus far considered, 
has been that they have been quoted in the New 
Testament as referring to Christ, either by Christ 
himself or by his apostles, or by both. This fact 
has been accepted as conclusive proof of their 
Messianic character. If we believe in the inspira- 
tion of the writers of the New Testament, that in 
their statements of facts and arguments in favor of 
the Messiahship of Jesus drawn from the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures they were under the guidance 
of God's Spirit, and if we believe in the divine 
authority of Christ and his exemption from error, 
their interpretation of the prophetic passages re- 
moves all uncertainty, and leaves no room for 
question or discussion. But if there are interpre- 
ters who do not regard the testimony of Christ and 
his apostles as authoritative and final, who think 
them liable to errors of interpretation, of state- 
ment, and of doctrine, we occupy entirely different 
grounds. 

The question then is not, What did Christ and his 
apostles say and teach ? but, Is what they said and 
taught worth anything ? Should it have any weight 
LcfC. 99 



IOO THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

and value ? And if their teaching in respect to 
the Messianic prophecies is to be discounted, how 
can we put any confidence in their teaching in 
respect to any truth of God or religion? Such a 
position seems to take the bottom out of Chris- 
tianity itself. Christianity as a system rests upon 
the person of Christ and the teachings of Christ and 
his inspired apostles. As believers in Christianity 
as a divine and authoritative religion, we can have 
no use, therefore, for interpreters who question the 
very basis of its authority. As establishing the 
truthfulness of the Messianic prophecies we regard 
the testimony of Christ and his apostles as final and 
absolutely conclusive. 

But some wise and devout students of the Bible 
have gone so far as to say that only those passages 
in the Old Testament are to be regarded as refer- 
ring to Christ which are so referred by the writers 
of the New Testament, as if it were to be expected, 
or were even possible, for the followers of Christ to 
gather up and repeat in their brief writings all ref- 
erences to the Messiah in the sacred Scriptures of 
a people in whose souls the Messianic hope was an 
ever-present reality and which was ever finding ex- 
pression in their history, their ritual of worship, 
their psalms of faith, their religious literature, their 
record of daily life, and their anticipations of na- 
tional greatness and glory. 

Pressense has truly said : 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 10 1 

It would be having an incomplete conception of prophecy 
to see it nowhere but in the oracles of the prophets. It cir- 
culated in every part of Judaism, it flowed from every insti- 
tution, as from every event. The Mosaic system was, as a 
whole, the figure of that which was to come. Thus, even 
when there flourished no prophet, prophecy did not cease for 
a moment to cause its voice to be heard. Even in silence 
it spoke by the worship, by the altar, by the blood of the 
victims. 

This sublime national hope, which entered into 
the deepest life and the solemn public worship of 
the Jewish people, all pervasive and indestructible, 
would naturally and inevitably flash out everywhere 
in their annals and prophecies. It was the one 
blessed reality of their lives toward which thought 
and hope, desire and worship all converged. Said 
the late Dr. Hackett : 

It is unreasonable to suppose that the comparatively few 
passages which are cited in the New Testament from the 
Old, as having been spoken of Christ and as fulfilled in 
him, exhaust the number of such passages. The New Testa- 
ment represents the Redeemer as the great subject of the 
ancient economy ; and if those types and predictions only 
have reference to him which are cited and applied in that 
manner, it would be difficult to see how the Hebrew Scriptures 
could claim such a character of predominant reference to the 
Christian dispensation. It should be admitted that other 
portions also, which the Saviour and the apostles have not 
interpreted for us, may have a Messianic import. We im- 
pose all proper safeguards on the principle if we insist that 
the language of the passages in question be clearly such as 



102 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

to indicate their applicability to Christ and his kingdom, 
and that the views concerning him and his work deduced 
from them harmonize entirely with the general tenor of the 
Old Testament revelations on this subject, which are unques- 
tionable in their character. With these precautions we may 
safely understand such passages as Messianic, though we 
have not the express authority of the New Testament writers 
for such an interpretation. 

The seventy-second Psalm is one of these un- 
quoted Messianic passages. There is language in 
the New Testament which is strikingly similar to 
some of the verses of the psalm. But the psalm is 
never used as an argument by New Testament 
writers in favor of the character, mission, and reign 
of Christ. There is no quotation from it whatever 
to show how Christ and his apostles regarded it. A 
plain quotation and reference to Christ would have 
been proof positive of its Messianic import. On 
the other hand, the omission of any quotation is no 
argument against it, if there are manifest indications 
in the psalm itself that it referred to the coming 
Messiah, and the character, the extent, and the 
glory of his kingdom. 

Cheyne, in "Jewish Religious Life After the 
Exile," does not hesitate to speak of this as "an- 
other Messianic psalm," though he does not admit 
that it has any personal application to Christ. He 
uses the term " Messiah" in a different sense from 
that in which it is ordinarily employed. "The 
truth is that the Messiah is but a poetic embodi- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS IO3 

ment of the Davidic royalty, and the Davidic roy- 
alty, in the absence of any real political interest, is 
but the representative of the Jewish people." He 
takes exception to the striking remark of R. H. 
Hutton, that the Jewish prophets had learned that 
"There must be between the Father and human 
nature some being lowly as the latter, perfect as 
the former, whose kingliness would not consist in 
mere righteous power, but in righteous humility." 

It may be said, in passing, that Jewish interpre- 
ters have had no doubt as to this personal Mes- 
sianic application. The Targum paraphrases the 
first verse of the psalm in this manner : " O God, 
give the knowledge of thy judgments to the King 
Messiah, and thy justice to the son of King David." 
And the Midrash Tehillim says of the king here 
spoken of, "This is the King Messiah." 

But it is the character of the psalm itself, its re- 
markable language, its wonderful description of the 
coming king and his kingdom, its beautiful imagery 
as to the beneficence and universal extent of his 
reign that determines its reference and application. 
The authorship of the psalm does not affect its in- 
terpretation. It is ascribed to Solomon, and this is 
one of two psalms that bear his name, the other 
being the one hundred and twenty-seventh. There 
is no good argument against its Solomonic author- 
ship. Hupfeld thinks it belongs to a later time, 
but offers no proof of his opinion. 



104 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Delitzsch, on the other hand, contends that we find here 
the marks both of Solomon' s style and of Solomon' s time ; 
that the expressions are arranged for the most part in dis- 
tichs, like the Proverbs, that the character of the poetry is 
reflective, that it is rich in images borrowed from the world 
of nature. 

It is possible that the psalm found a partial ful- 
fillment in the reign of Solomon, especially in the 
earlier and more prosperous part of his reign. 
The history tells us that : 

Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river unto 
the land of the Philistines, and unto the border of Egypt ; 
they brought presents and served Solomon all the days of 
his life. . . All the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wis- 
dom, which God had put into his heart. . . And when the 
queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the 
name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard ques- 
tions. . . And she said to the king . . . Blessed be the Lord 
thy God which delighted in thee, to set thee on the throne 
of Israel : because the Lord loved Israel for ever, therefore 
made he thee king, to do judgment and justice. And she 
gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of 
spices very great store, and precious stones : there came no 
more such abundance of spices as those which the queen 
of Sheba gave to king Solomon. 1 

This language bears some resemblance to the 
language of the psalm, and if the psalm was writ- 
ten later, may have furnished a historic basis. "Be 
this as it may, we have here," says Perowne, "an- 

1 I Kings 4:21; 10 : 24 ; 10 : I, 9, 10. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 105 

other instance of the way in which prophecy rooted 
itself in the Jewish soil, how it looked first to the 
present and then to the future, first to the type and 
then to the antitype." Though in the judgment 
of candor the psalm may have had only a partial 
application in the reign of Solomon, it harmonized 
with that more than with the reign of any other 
Jewish monarch. 

But the contents of the psalm make it impos- 
sible to understand it as limited to the character 
and reign of any earthly king. Tholuck says : "It 
would exceed the highest flight of poetic fancy to 
apply it in that manner/' The psalm is too large 
to be accepted as the description of the little glory 
and pomp of any historic reality. Its language is 
too spiritual, too grand, too lofty, too far-reaching, 
to be limited to the proudest empire that the world 
has ever seen or that the annals of history have 
preserved any record of. The portrait of the king 
is glorious beyond any human original. The be- 
neficence of his reign and the happy and prosper- 
ous condition of his subjects find no counterpart 
this side of the predicted millennium. The extent 
and the duration of his dominion are as wide as 
the universe and lasting as eternity. 

As another has said : " The king described here 
is to be acknowledged in all the earth, and his 
dominion to endure forever. The traits of char- 
acter also which are to distinguish him declare his 



106 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

superiority to any human ruler, and the blessings 
which he is to confer no power less than the High- 
est can bestow on its subjects." 

No candid reader can peruse this psalm and con- 
template the picture here presented without ex- 
claiming spontaneously: "O King, thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God. Thy kingdom 
is righteousness and peace and joy, and is from 
everlasting to everlasting. The kingdoms of this 
world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and 
of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." 

The psalm may be divided into four parts and a 
doxology, though the inspired writer is so full of 
the thought of the prosperous and glorious reign 
of the Messiah that he constantly returns upon 
himself and resumes and unfolds still further the 
thought that is swelling within his breast. 

In the first four verses is set forth the righteous 
and peaceful character of the coming kingdom of 
the Messiah. " Give the king thy judgments, O 
God, and thy righteousness unto the king 's Son." 
How appropriate the language as applied to David's 
greater Son, before whose glory all other descend- 
ants disappear and are forgotten. His throne shall 
be established in righteousness, which is the founda- 
tion of all good government, human or divine. 
What men need to-day as the true relief of all 
social evils is not paternalism, as it is called, about 
which we hear so much, but righteousness and 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS IO7 

equity in legislation and administration. " He shall 
judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor 
with judgment" This shall bring about a return 
of peace and prosperity to the people. Then " The 
mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the 
little hills, by righteousness." The last word quali- 
fies both members of the sentence. It is peace by 
righteousness. All places, high and low, shall yield 
a harvest of peace, because they have been sown 
with the seeds of righteousness. It is not charity 
but equity, not paternalism but righteousness, that 
men most need in human government, and that will 
characterize the coming reign of the Messiah. All 
classes shall fare alike. There shall be no partial- 
ity and no distinction. The rights of all shall be 
sacredly protected. "He shall judge the poor of 
the people, he shall save the children of the needy, 
and shall break in pieces the oppressor." All op- 
pression and wrong shall come to an end, whether 
it be of the poor by the rich or of the rich by the 
poor, because the oppressors themselves shall come 
to an end. There will not be enough of any one 
of them left to oppress anybody or anything. 
They shall be broken in pieces. 

The next three verses (5-7) set forth the endless 
duration of the kingdom of the Messiah, and at 
the same time its rapid and beneficent growth and 
its blessed effect upon the people. " They shall 
fear thee [that is, the divine Son] as long as the 



108 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

sun and moon endure \ throughout all generations." 
"The sun and moon are mentioned here," it has 
been said, " as witnesses to an everlasting order, 
and, as it were, figures of eternity compared with 
the fleeting, dying generations of men." So long 
as the solar system stands, so long as suns shall rise 
and set, so long as moons shall wax and wane, so 
long as the generations of the human race shall 
survive, the name of Christ shall be reverenced. 

But though all power is his in heaven and in 
earth, so that he could break in pieces the cruel 
oppressor, his victories shall be won by the irre- 
sistible might of his own gentleness and grace. 
" He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass : 
as showers that water the earth" This language 
reminds us of those other words which have not 
always been remembered by men, "Not by might 
nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." 

As gentle as the showers from heaven, and as 
perceptibly effective as when they fall upon the 
fields over which the scythe has gone, and quicken 
their apparent barrenness and deadness into an 
abundance of verdant life, so shall be the refresh- 
ing and life-giving influence of the Messiah's reign. 
As another has said, "The gracious influence of 
the monarch and of his righteous sway is strik- 
ingly compared to the bountiful shower which 
freshens the withered herbage and changes the 
brown, bare, parched, dusty surface, as by a touch 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS IO9 

of magic, into one mass of verdure and bloom." 
This suggestive figure, especially suggestive in the 
dry, tropical Syrian climate, pictures to us the 
beauty and loveliness of Christ's reign in human 
hearts and in human society. It brings life, moral 
and spiritual beauty, out of apparent death and 
unfruitfulness. It changes the whole condition 
of things. For "In his days shall the righteous 
flourish ; and abundance of peace so long as the 
moon endure th." A righteous kingdom will make 
righteous subjects. The best human governments 
can only protect those who are good. But this 
new government of the Messiah is to be composed 
of regenerated men. It is to convert bad citizens 
into good citizens, and to rest upon the renewed 
hearts and refashioned characters of its subjects. 
And so it is that under the Messiah's reign " mercy 
and truth are met together" in holy wedlock, and 
"righteousness and peace shall kiss each other" in 
loving and lasting embrace. 

The next four verses (8-1 1) set forth in Oriental 
language the universal territorial extent of the king- 
dom of Christ, and the subjection of all powers and 
of all lands to him. "He shall have dominion also 
from sea to sea" from the neighboring Mediter- 
ranean to that supposed encircling sea beyond the 
utmost verge of the habitable continent, " and from 
the river wito the ends of the earth" from the Eu- 
phrates unto the remotest boundaries of all lands. 



IIO THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

" They that dwell in the wilderness," the wild, un- 
civilized, untamed savages of the desert, "shall bow 
before him" and any who oppose him shall be com- 
pletely subdued. " The kings of Tarshish and of 
the isles" i. e., Spain and the remote islands of the 
west, "the empire on the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean, the great maritime and commercial coun- 
tries of the world," u shall bring presents" in return 
for blessings received, and " the kings of Sheba and 
Seba," i. e., Arabia and Ethiopia in the far south, 
"shall offer gifts" of tribute and of homage. 
" Yea, all kings [whoever they are, and however 
powerful] shall fall down before him ; all nations 
[however mighty and remote] shall serve him." 
His dominion shall be complete and world-wide. 
Of what earthly monarch has it ever been, or will 
it ever be, true ? Of whom can such language be 
employed without the grossest exaggeration, except 
of him who is declared to be " King of kings and 
Lord of lords." 

But we are not allowed to forget the character of 
the reign of the Messiah, his personal exaltation 
and glory, the fruitfulness and blessedness of his 
kingdom, and the eternal splendor which shall rest 
upon his royal name. All these are set forth in 
fresh and striking language in the next six verses 
of the psalm (12—17). "For he shall deliver the 
needy when he crieth ; the poor also, and him that 
hath no helper [but God]. He shall spare the poor 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS III 

and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. 
He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence ; 
and precious shall their blood be in his sight." The 
sad, the lonely, the outcast, the helpless, the op- 
pressed, the wronged, shall find in him the gracious 
Sympathizer, the mighty Protector, the divine Sav- 
iour, and the righteous Avenger. 

"And lie shall live, and to him shall be given of 
the gold of Sheba ; prayer also shall be made for 
him continually ; and daily shall he be praised." 
His reign shall not be terminated by his death. 
His dynasty shall be without end. He shall have 
no successor on his throne. The tribute of the 
world shall be forever laid at his feet. When we 
pray "Thy kingdom come," we are praying for 
the Messiah, and his glorious and perpetual reign. 
When we sing "All hail the power of Jesus' name," 
we are giving him daily adoration and praise. 

Oh, how lovely shall be the sight ! How blessed 
shall be the realization of this sublime and thrilling 
prophecy ! " There shall be an abundance [not a 
handful] of corn in the earth upon the top of the 
mountains ; the fruit thereof shall shake like Leb- 
anon." As another has said : 

The idea is that the whole country shall be one bright 
sunny picture of gladness and fertility, the cornfields being 
seen not only in the valleys, but rising terrace above terrace, 
along the mountain-sides, till they reach their summits. The 
rustling of the cornfields in the wind is compared to the 



112 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

rustling of the cedars of Lebanon, so thick shall the corn 
stand, so rich shall be the harvest. 

" They shall flourish forth from the city like the 
grass of the earth" going forth on every side from 
its heated air, its stifled streets, its crowded homes 
into God's open fields, where heaven's healthful 
breezes blow, and no smoky atmosphere conceals 
the blue by day or the brilliance of the stars by 
night. The whole land shall be covered by a 
vigorous and happy population. We sometimes 
think now, that if the slums of the cities could be 
emptied into the country, and their contents spread 
out and purified and sweetened by the absorbent 
earth, and the pure air, and the healing sunshine, 
the millennium would begin to dawn, and social 
life would take on an appearance of health and 
permanence which it has not to-day, and civil 
government be purged of its elements of corrup- 
tion and decay. Are we not told that the name of 
the Messiah " shall endure forever" ? The per- 
manence of his government shall never be dis- 
turbed or endangered. "His name shall be con- 
tinued as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed 
in him : all nations shall call him blessed." The 
blessedness shall be reciprocal. The joy of the 
people shall be in their righteous and benevolent 
and glorious Sovereign ; and the joy of the Messiah 
shall be in his righteous and loving and obedient 
people. Then will Isaiah's prophecy be fulfilled : 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I 1 3 

" He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall 
be satisfied." 

Then follows a splendid doxology (ver. 18, 19), 
the outburst of religious feeling at the complete 
triumph of the Messiah's kingdom, its wonderful 
achievements and prosperity, wrought by the hand 
of the Almighty, and its world-wide renown. 
"Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who 
only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his 
glorious name forever ; and let the whole earth be 
filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen." 

The psalm concludes with a statement (ver. 20), 
probably added by another hand, which seems to 
have been placed originally at the close of a col- 
lection of psalms, of which this was the last, and 
the most of which were composed by David — " The 
prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended." 

As has already been said, this psalm has missed 
being quoted in the New Testament, but its con- 
tents so striking, so sublime, so supernatural, and 
its language so beautiful, so spiritual, so glorious, 
so far-reaching, forbid its literal reference to King 
Solomon, and compel its application to one King 
and one kingdom, viz, the Messiah King of divine 
prophecy, and that kingdom which we are told is 
to result from the purification and the unification 
of all nations through the triumph of the gospel, 
when "the kingdoms of this world shall become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." 

H 



114 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Rev. Stanley Leathes, in "The Witness of the 
Old Testament to Christ," has these convincing 
words as to the spiritual and Messianic application 
of the psalm : 

From this seventy-second Psalm let us take the words, 
"His name shall endure forever ; his name shall be con- 
tinued as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in 
him ; all nations shall call him blessed." What is it that 
they say ? If taken literally, which is all I ask, it is simply 
absurd, either to refer them to the reign of Solomon, or to 
suppose that David could refer to him in them. He knew 
that his son would be mortal like himself ; he knew that 
the duration of the material heavens would outlast the 
physical lifetime of Solomon. These were broad facts, of 
which he could not possibly be ignorant ; neither could he 
believe that men should be blessed, or should bless them- 
selves, in him. . . We may therefore justly maintain that 
the blessing anticipated for Solomon, and for Israel and 
mankind through him, was more than a material or secular 
blessing. From the nature of the case it could not but be. 
We are bound to measure the significance of David' s lan- 
guage by the known tenor of his thoughts, to interpret his 
words by the plain and obvious facts of his life. And, thus 
interpreted, the seventy-second Psalm . . . affords the 
clearest evidence, that with the divine promise of a son 
who should build the house of God, there was associated in 
the mind of David the hope of a greater and more glorious 
king, of whose dominion it shall not be vain and meaning- 
less hyperbole to say that it should extend from sea to sea, 
and from the river unto the ends of the earth. 

You will notice that the picture presented is not 
the picture of heaven. The scene is laid here upon 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS II5 

the earth. The sun and the moon still hold their 
places in the heavens. There seem to be still 
God's needy ones to be relieved and delivered, 
and still wrongs to be righted and oppressions to 
be avenged. 

It is not exactly the picture of the triumphant 
church of Christ, with its worship, its spiritual fel- 
lowship, its accepted faith, and its songs of redeem- 
ing love, although this may be said to be included 
as a necessary means and vital part of that changed 
earthly condition which the psalm foretells. 

But it seems to be the revelation of a new social 
order, of a moral progress and revolution among 
men and nations, of which reformers and philan- 
thropists and statesmen and sociologists sometimes 
dream, when social evils shall be well-nigh exter- 
minated, when the rights of all men shall be pro- 
tected, when political corruption shall be unknown, 
when the government shall be administered in 
righteousness and equity, and the people in rela- 
tion to it and to one another shall be actuated by 
like principles of righteousness, and charity and 
great prosperity and abundance of peace shall 
everywhere prevail ; in a word, it is the realization 
of the kingdom of God on earth, for the coming of 
which Christ taught his disciples to pray, the con- 
ditions of membership in which he laid down in 
the Sermon on the Mount, and which he set forth 
in the New Testament as the millennial reign of 



Il6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the Messiah among all nations, in the homes, the 
families, the business and social life, the pursuits, 
the legislation, the civil institutions of men, that 
whole system of relations and duties which grow 
out of the social organism, into which we are born 
and in which we live. 

As has been said, it is not the church or 
churches as ecclesiastical organizations, that are 
here portrayed ; yet it is these churches of Christ, 
with their perpetual proclamation of truth and in- 
tercession with God for the renewing power of the 
divine Spirit, their constant inculcation of right 
principles, and their mighty, molding influence 
upon character and life, the continual holding forth 
of the lofty personal and social ideals found only 
in the gospel, their unceasing activities in all direc- 
tions, including their aggressive missionary opera- 
tions, which reach out to the ends of the earth — I 
say it is these churches of Christ, as they embody 
his spirit and follow his commands, that are the 
necessary means in bringing about that changed 
social order which the psalmist vividly foretells as 
a future realization. 

The new social order will not come until the per- 
sonal units of life are brought under the influence 
of the converting Spirit of God and his enlighten- 
ing truth. You cannot have a regenerated society 
until the men who compose it are themselves re- 
generated. The divine leaven is necessary for the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS II7 

leavening of the whole lump. Legislation is good, 
inasmuch as it registers and makes effective any 
advance in moral sentiment. Discussion, agitation, 
instruction along sociological lines, are of value as 
they hold up the true ideals and point out the cor- 
rect means of their attainment ; if they do not, 
they are so much wasted energy. The divine 
kingdom will come on earth only by the divine 
methods. The new social order will result only 
from the new individual disposition and life. The 
church of Jesus Christ has, in its divine message of 
truth and its essential missionary spirit, the secret 
of all permanent social progress, and of the re- 
organization of the world. 

Dr. James S. Dennis, in his able work, " Chris- 
tian Missions and Social Progress," says : 

Christianity being sociological in its scope, Christian mis- 
sions must be so considered, for their one purpose is to 
propagate Christianity, and bring it into touch with the in- 
dividual heart and with the associate life of man. It seems 
impossible to deny to missions a social scope of immense 
significance. They deal with the individual, and through 
him reach society. If they change the religious convictions 
and the moral character of the man, they put him at once 
into a new attitude toward the domestic, civil, economic, 
and ethical aspects of society. If they put the individual 
right with God, they will necessarily transform his attitude 
toward man into harmony with Christian teaching. They 
introduce also new institutions into the social life of man- 
kind — not simply new ecclesiastical organizations, but new 
educational and philanthropic movements, and they also 



I 1 8 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

plant the germs of new political and industrial ideals, and 
open a new realm of intellectual and religious thought, 
which is focused in a wonderful way upon a new conception 
of liberty and a purer and nobler social life. 

" Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy 
righteousness unto the king's Son"; let Christ 
reign in the hearts of all citizens, let his Spirit 
"come down like rain upon the mown grass, as 
showers that water the earth" ; then shall the 
kingdom of heaven be among us ; then the right- 
eous shall multiply and flourish in every land ; 
then there shall be a universal reign of personal 
holiness and civic righteousness and peace so long 
as the moon endureth. This is the prophetic vision 
and the glorious promise contained in the psalm. 

Jesus shall reign where' er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run : 
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, 
Till moons shall wax and wane no more. 

For him shall endless prayer be made, 
And praises throng to crown his head, 
His name like sweet perfume shall rise 
With every morning sacrifice. 

People and realms of every tongue 
Dwell on his love with sweetest song ; 
And infant voices shall proclaim 
Their early blessings on his name. 

Blessings abound where' er he reigns ; 
The prisoner leaps to loose his chains ; 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS II9 

The weary find eternal rest, 

And all the sons of want are blest. 

Let every creature rise and bring 
Peculiar honors to our King ; 
Angels descend with songs again, 
And earth repeat the loud Amen ! 



CHAPTER VI 
PSALM XLV 



VI 

This psalm is altogether unique. 

Psalm XLV ~ u \ .,, ,-, -i ,, 

There is nothing like it among all 

the other psalms. It appears to be, and it un- 
doubtedly is, a marriage song, an epithalamium of 
great beauty and purity. It was undoubtedly com- 
posed to celebrate the marriage of a Jewish king 
with a royal bride, apparently of foreign birth. 
This was evidently its primary purpose and appli- 
cation. It was as when England's poet laureate 
celebrated the nuptials of the prince of Wales and 
the coming of Denmark's worthy princess into the 
royal family of Great Britain ; only the language 
of the psalm is more beautiful than anything that 
Tennyson, though in some respects the greatest 
poet of this century, ever wrote. 

The inspired psalmist evidently felt himself car- 
ried aloft by his theme, and in some way specially 
qualified for the delicate and joyous service which 
he was prompted to undertake. In the opening 
verse of the psalm he declares : " My heart is indit- 
ing [or overflowing with] a good matter : I am 
speaking ; my work is for a King ; my tongue is 
the pen of a ready writer." This verse contains the 
dedication of the psalm to the royal person who is 

123 



124 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

its subject, and also claims that it was truly inspired 
by him. As another has paraphrased the lan- 
guage : " My poem, the work or creation of my 
imagination, is for a king, is dedicated to and in- 
spired by him." 

The authorship of the psalm is unknown, and its 
title is very perplexing. The word " Shoshannim " 
means lilies, and probably denotes some musical 
instrument, which was called by that name, and 
bore some resemblance to that flower in its shape. 
Some have understood the word to apply, in part, 
to the subject of the psalm, the royal bride, the 
lily being taken as the emblem of pure and lovely 
womanhood, especially at the time of its espousals. 
The latter part of the title is eminently appropri- 
ate. It is "a song of love," of pure and holy 
love, human and also, as will be made evident, di- 
vine. 

There is great diversity of opinion as to the 
primary and contemporary reference of the psalm. 
The oldest and most generally accepted theory is 
that it refers to the marriage of Solomon with the 
daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. But Hup- 
feld, Hitzig, Delitzsch, and others, take different 
views from this, and from each other, and seek in 
various directions to find some historic event to 
which the psalm can be appropriately applied. It 
is not necessary to explain these views, for the rea- 
sons urged for their support do not seem to be con- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 125 

elusive, but rather conjectural and open to serious 
objections. Indeed, the reference to Solomon and 
his marriage to Pharaoh's daughter is not abso- 
lutely certain, but only a probable interpretation 
in the minds of those who hold the view. 

One strong reason urged against it is, as the late 
Prof. O. S. Stearns has said, " the martial character 
of the reign which the psalmist pictures, combined 
with the absence of any reference to Egypt." In 
the third, fourth, and fifth verses we read these 
words, addressed to the king : " Gird thy szvord 
upon thy thigh, most Mighty, with thy glory and 
thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously, 
because of truth and meekness and righteoi-isness ; 
and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. 
Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King 's 
enemies ; whereby the people fall under thee." 

Solomon could hardly be called a warlike king. 
His reign was rather distinguished for its peace and 
luxury. It may be that the psalmist blended the 
local picture with the prophetic picture, and saw in 
vision the mighty triumphs of the Messiah King, 
as like a warrior he should march on from victoiy 
to victory, and his enemies should fall before his 
irresistible power. This portraiture of the coming 
Messiah is not unusual in the psalms and prophets, 
and this blending of history and prophecy, of the 
present and the future, of the earthly and the spir- 
itual, of the visible reign of the earthly king and 



126 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the blessed triumphs of King Immanuel, is by no 
means a strange occurrence. It was so easy for 
the prophet to expand the little historic incident 
into the large, rich, and glorious description of the 
power and splendor and world-wide dominion of 
the King that was to be. 

At any rate, it may be said that this psalm fits 
into the experience of Solomon, and his marriage 
to Pharaoh's daughter, and the characteristics of 
his reign, better than into anything else. Perowne 
has said : 

On the whole, the general character of the psalm, de- 
scribing as it does the majesty and persuasive eloquence of 
the king, the splendor of his appearance and of his palace, 
and the hopes which he raised for the future, is such as to 
make it more justly applicable to Solomon than to any 
other of the Jewish monarchs, so far as we are acquainted 
with their fortunes. Nor is it necessarily an objection to 
this view, that the monarch of the psalm is spoken of as a 
warrior, while Solomon was peculiarly "a. man of peace." 
Something must be allowed to poetry. [And he might 
have added, as I have said, to the spirit and nature of 
prophecy.] An extended dominion would naturally be as- 
sociated with ideas of conquest. And, with the recollec- 
tion of his father's exploits fresh in his mind, the poet 
could not but regard warlike virtues as essential to the glory 
of the son. Besides, Solomon himself does not seem to 
have been deficient in military spirit. 

It should be said that Dean Stanley found in 
this psalm simply a reference to King Solomon, 
and no reference whatever to the Messiah King, 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 12J 

though he appears to have done it in defiance of 
the obvious translation of the original Hebrew, and 
of the distinct reference of the psalm to Christ in 
the New Testament. On the other hand, another 
able English interpreter, Sadler, in an elaborate 
comparison of the language of the psalm with the 
history of Solomon and of Christ, in parallel col- 
umns, has undertaken to show that its reference is 
exclusively to Christ and not at all to Solomon. In 
this view he follows the great Church Fathers. He 
says : 

A very cursory examination will serve to convince the 
reader that if this psalm be written of Solomon, it must 
have been written as a satire. There is not a single image 
employed by the poet, the reality of which, when applied 
to Solomon, does not miserably fail. . . There is not the 
smallest historical evidence for connecting this psalm with 
Solomon. 

The middle view is undoubtedly the true one, 
and is taken by almost all modern interpreters, viz, 
that while this psalm did have a local reference, 
though scholars are not entirely agreed as to what 
it was, it also pointed forward to Christ, his per- 
sonal character and reign, his kingly glory and 
power, and to the beauty and excellence of his 
church, which was to be his spiritual bride, and 
also to the multiplication and increasing influence 
of his disciples, by whom his name and his fame 
should be spread abroad in all the earth. It is a 



128 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

beautiful, significant, Oriental use of language, and 
as will be seen, is entirely in harmony with other 
passages of Scripture. 

In studying prophecy it is wise to remember the 
profoundly philosophical remark of Doctor Ar- 
nold : 

Every prophecy has, according to the very definition of 
the word, a double sense ; it has, if I may venture so to 
speak, two authors, the one human, the other divine. 

The admirable paragraph of Perowne is worthy 
of quotation. After speaking of the primary ref- 
erence of the psalm to Solomon, he adds: 

But a greater than Solomon is here. Evident as it is- 
that much of the language of the poem is only properly 
applicable to the circumstances of the royal nuptials which 
occasioned it, it is no less evident that much of it greatly 
transcends them. The outward glory of Solomon was but 
a type and a foreshadowing of a better glory to be revealed. 
Israel' s true king was not David or Solomon, but One of 
whom they, at the best, were only faint and transient im- 
ages. A righteous One was yet to come, who should indeed 
rule in truth and equity, who should fulfill all the hopes 
which one human monarch after another, however fair the 
promise of his reign, had disappointed, and whose king- 
dom, because it was a righteous kingdom, should endure 
forever. Such a ruler would, indeed, be the vicegerent of 
God. In such an one, and by such an one, God would 
reign. He would be of the seed of David, and yet more 
glorious than all his fellows ; human, and yet above men. It 
was because of this wonderfully close and real relation be- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 29 

tween God and man — a relation which the true king would 
visibly symbolize — that the psalmist could address him as 
God. In him God and man would in some mysterious 
manner meet. This, perhaps, he did see ; more than this 
he could not see. The mystery of the incarnation was not 
yet revealed. But David knew that God had made man to 
be but little short of divine. * And he and others, full of 
hopes, the very greatness of which made them indistinct, 
uttered them in words that went far beyond themselves. 

In support of this Messianic import and applica- 
tion of the psalm the following reasons may be 
presented, which taken together can leave no 
doubt in the mind. 

First, it may be said that this is the most ancient 
and almost unanimous interpretation. Jews and 
Christians are agreed. Aben-Ezra says : "This 
psalm treats of David, or rather of his son Messiah, 
for that is his name, 2 ' And David my servant shall 
be their prince forever.' " The Chaldee paraphrast 
on the second verse writes : "Thy beauty, O King 
Messiah, is greater than that of the sons of men." 
Kimchi and Mendelssohn so refer it. This in- 
terpretation is not a modern or a Christian discov- 
ery. It is the ancient tradition of Hebrew scholar- 
ship. 

Secondly, it may be remarked that the place of 
this psalm in the sacred Hebrew Psalter is evidence 
that it was more than a song of human love. I do 

^s. 8:5. 2 Ezek. 34:24. 



130 THE MESSIAH" IN THE PSALMS 

not speak depreciatingly of human affection. The 
relation between true husband and wife is sacred, 
and is of divine appointment. The domestic tie 
and the domestic joy are the highest on earth. 
The words "home" and "family" stand next to 
"heaven" in their holy significance. The mar- 
riage of two souls, who have been bound together 
by the cords of a pure and unchanging affection, 
is one of the most solemn as well as joyous transac- 
tions that can enter into human life, and has been 
thought worthy by Christ himself to symbolize the 
relation between him and his people. It makes 
no difference whether that union be consummated 
in the royal family or among the humblest sub- 
jects, in ivory palaces or under a thatched roof. 
The rite may be equally sacred, and the union of 
hearts equally pure and worthy of the divine bene- 
diction. The wedding is a suitable service for the 
temple of God, and the wedding march is not in- 
appropriate music to resound within its consecrated 
walls. The Song of Solomon has been thought fit 
to be included in the canon of the holy Scriptures. 
Were this psalm simply a song of human love and 
a picture of domestic joy, it might not be un- 
worthy to be preserved in the sacred literature of a 
nation. 

But the Psalms are -uniformly expressions of 
adoration to God and of religious emotion. They 
are vocal with the penitence, the humility, the faith, 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I3I 

the love, the joy, the hope of their writers, and of 
the people who consecrated them to the uses 
of worship. They were sung in the service of the 
sanctuary. The Jews of old, like the Christians of 
to-day, were ever anticipating the felicity and 
glorious triumph of God's coming kingdom. Their 
faces were toward the future, a future that was to 
them radiant with the Messianic hope. And the 
existence of this hymn in the midst of their sacred 
songs is presumptive evidence that it had to them 
a deeply religious import, even as their own writers 
have declared, and that whenever it was sung their 
thoughts leaped forth from the transient event 
that may have been its occasion to the glorious 
fulfillment of their dearest hopes, from the earthly 
bridegroom clothed with regal splendor to the di- 
vine King of infinitely superior grace and power, 
from the fair human princess adopted from a for- 
eign land to the spotless bride whom the Messiah 
King would one day take to himself to be his for- 
ever. 

Thirdly, the inspired writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews fixes the Messianic character of the psalm 
and its application to Christ, beyond a question or 
a doubt. In the first chapter of the Epistle the 
language of the sixth and seventh verses of the 
psalm is quoted as distinctly referring to Christ : 
"But unto the Son he saith, thy throne, O God, is 
forever and ever ; a sceptre of righteousness is the 



132 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved right- 
eousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, even 
thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of glad- 
ness above thy fellows." The writer of the Epistle 
is showing the superiority of Christ, the divine Son, 
to the angels, both in person and in office ; and 
in proof of that superiority he quotes the psalm- 
ist's words as evidence which the Hebrews would 
not dispute, of Christ's divinity and supremacy, 
and the righteous and endless character of his 
reign. The argument is unfolded by Ebrard as 
follows : 

Three things are declared of the ideal of a theocratic 
King — consequently of the Messiah, (a) he is Elohim, his 
authority is the authority of God himself ; (d) his dominion 
is endless ; (c) both are true because he perfectly fulfills 
the will of God. The perfect theocratic King — therefore 
Christ [which required no proofs for the readers of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews] stands in this three-fold relation 
above the angels. He is the absolute revelation of God, 
and therefore himself God ; the angels are only servants. 
He is King of an imperishable kingdom ; the angels exe- 
cute only periodical commands. He rules in a moral way 
as founder of a kingdom of righteousness, and his whole 
dignity as Messiah is founded directly on his moral and 
spiritual relation to man ; the angels are only mediators of 
outward appearances of nature, by which a rude, unsuscep- 
tible people are to be trained for higher things. 

The whole argument, it will be noticed, is piv- 
oted upon the intended and acknowledged applica- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 33 

bility of the psalm to Christ, the Messiah King. 
"But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is 
for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousness is the 
sceptre of thy kingdom." 

Fourthly, the language of the psalm can be 
truthfully employed only of Christ, the Messiah 
King and the faithful Bridegroom of the people of 
God. Some of the language, as has been said, 
would easily find its application to some earthly 
royal bridegroom and his splendid wedding ; but 
much of it demands an object superior to any hu- 
man prince and his regal nuptials. No allowance 
for Oriental extravagance can explain it. There is 
a precision and defmiteness about it, that seems to 
determine its application to the Messiah King, the 
Prince of the House of the Spiritual Israel, and 
true Son of God. " Thou art fairer than the chil- 
dren of men ; grace is poured into thy lips ; there- 
fore God hath blessed thee forever." These words 
contain an acknowledgment of a beauty and elo- 
quence, blessedness and perfection, more than hu- 
man. They remind us of the descriptive language 
of the Gospels : "Grace and truth came by Jesus 
Christ," "They wondered at the gracious words 
which proceeded out of his mouth," "Never man 
spake like this man," and of the striking words of 
Saint Paul, " Christ came, who is over all, God 
blessed for ever." 

But the king here described is not only fairer 



134 TH E MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

than all the sons of men, his lips being filled with 
wonderful wisdom and grace, but he is to be 
mighty in battle ; indeed he is to be almighty, and 
the nations are to be subdued by him. He is to 
gird on his sword with glory and majesty, and ride 
on prosperously, not to acquire extent of territory 
and glittering renown, but "in behalf of truth and 
meekness and righteousness," an unparalleled com- 
bination of motives in any earthly conqueror, to 
uphold the truth, and extend the reign of meek- 
ness and righteousness among men. Such motives 
are found only in his breast who confessed to Pilate 
his kingly character, saying, " To this end was I 
born, and for this cause came I into the world, that 
I should bear witness unto the truth," and whose 
kingdom rested upon such sublime and unworldly 
beatitudes as these: "Blessed are the meek, for 
they shall inherit the earth " and " Blessed are 
they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, for they shall be filled." Such conquests are 
made, and such subjects are won, only by him who 
is the princely Captain of the world's salvation and 
its Deliverer from the pride and unrighteousness of 
the human heart ; and his arrows, which are sharp 
in the hearts of his enemies, may well be the sharp 
arrows of conviction sent from the bow of divine 
truth, which is the mighty weapon employed in all 
his conquests. 

Moreover, we must all agree with the writer of 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 35 

the Epistle to the Hebrews that the ascription of 
adoration and praise, " Thy throne, God, is for ever 
and ever : the sceptre of thy kingdom is a sceptre 
of righteousness" cannot refer to any earthly 
prince, but only to Prince Immanuel, who does 
indeed love righteousness and hate wickedness, 
whose government has its foundations laid in right- 
eousness, in the most regal of all principles, which 
is the essential foundation of a kingdom and an 
empire which are to be without end. The psalm- 
ist says, " Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed 
thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows," 
that is, thou art blessed of God above all thy fel- 
low princes ; above all earthly kings ; and the 
Apostle Paul says, "Wherefore God also hath 
highly exalted him, and given him a name that is 
above every name, that at the name of Jesus every 
knee should bow, . . and every tongue should con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God 
the Father." 

It is impossible to read the description of the 
king in the psalm as possessing more than human 
grace and beauty, as a victorious warrior, as a 
righteous sovereign, as a bridegroom arrayed for 
his approaching marriage and surrounded by the 
praises of an exultant people, without recalling 
the vision, recorded in Rev. 19, of One who is de- 
clared to be "King of kings and Lord of lords," 
who is both king and warrior and bridegroom, and 



I36 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

whose victories and whose marriage call forth the 
loudest and most jubilant praises : 

I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, 
Alleluia ; salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, unto 
the Lord our God : for true and righteous are his judg- 
ments. . . And I heard as it were the voice of a great mul- 
titude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice 
of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia ; for the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give 
honor to him ; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and 
his wife hath made herself ready. 

It will not do to undertake to find some spiritual, 
symbolic meaning in all the verses of the psalm, 
for some of the language, as in the case of the 
parables of our Lord, is but beautiful drapery. 
But the appearance and character of the bride, no 
less than the person and dignity of the royal Bride- 
groom, are clearly portrayed by the inspired writer 
in language applicable to the church of Christ. 
She is to be of exalted character and of great 
spiritual loveliness, queenly in her rank and queenly 
in the purity and excellence of her spirit, the 
fitting bride of a kingly Groom. " Upon thy 
right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. 
Hearken, daughter, and consider, and incline 
thine ear." Listen to the gracious words of in- 
struction and invitation that fall from his lips. 
" Forget also thine own people, and thy father's 
house." "Come out from among them, and be 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 37 

ye separate." " Let the dead bury their dead." 
" Take up thy cross, and follow me, so shalt thou 
be my disciple." " So shall the king greatly desire 
thy beauty.'" "Even as Christ also loved the 
church, and gave himself for it, that he might 
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water 
by the word, that he might present it to himself a 
glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing ; but that it should be holy and without 
blemish." " For he is thy Lord ; and worship thou 
him." Thy groom and also thy Lord ; to receive 
thy love and confidence, and at the same time thy 
homage, thy obedience, thy sincere adoration. 
The queen's robes are no less beautiful and costly 
than the robes of the king. When the bright wed- 
ding day shall come, Zion shall put on her beau- 
tiful garments, and it will be found that the Lamb's 
wife has made herself ready. ' ' The king 1 s daughter, ' ' 
says the psalmist, " is all glorious within ; her cloth- 
ing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto 
the king in raiment of needlework" " And to her 
was granted," says the writer of the book of Reve- 
lation, "that she should be arrayed in fine linen, 
clean and white ; for the fine linen is the righteous- 
ness of saints." "But we all," says Saint Paul, 
"with open face beholding as in a glass the glory 
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from 
glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 
" It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says 



I38 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Saint John, "but we know that when he shall ap- 
pear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as 
he is." All these striking phrases set forth the fit- 
ness, the worthiness, the spiritual likeness of the 
bride of Christ. 

The robe of the bride and the robe of the groom 
shall be of the same piece, of like fineness and 
beauty and splendor, woven of the same material 
and in the same loom, resplendent with the glory 
of perfect righteousness. Christ is "made unto us 
wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and re- 
demption." " He became sin for us, who knew no 
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of 
God in him." Oh, wondrous grace! Oh, blessed 
hope! In the prophetic psalm we read, "The 
king's daughter is all glorious within ; her clothing 
is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the 
king in raiment of needlework." And the prophet 
of the New Testament tells us: "She shall be 
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white ; for the fine 
linen is the righteousness of saints." 

A fifth and last reason for accepting the Messi- 
anic import of this psalm is found in the fact al- 
ready suggested that the portrayal of the coming 
Messiah as a kingly bridegroom is in harmony with 
other representations of* the sacred writings, both 
in the Old Testament and in the New. Indeed, 
this seems to have been a favorite figure employed 
by the Holy Spirit to set forth the relations be- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 39 

tween God and his people, and between Christ and 
his followers. Isaiah says : * " For thy Maker is 
thine husband ; the Lord of hosts is his name, and 
thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel ; the God of 
the whole earth shall he be called." And again 
the same prophet says : 2 "Thou shalt no more be 
termed forsaken ; neither shall thy land any more 
be termed desolate ; but thou shalt be called Heph- 
zibah, and thy land Beulah ; for the Lord delight- 
eth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as 
a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy Builder 
[or Maker] marry thee ; and as the bridegroom re- 
joiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over 
thee." God said to his ancient people by the 
mouth of his prophet, Ezekiel: 3 "Now when I 
passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy 
time was the time of love ; and I spread my skirt 
over thee, and covered thy nakedness ; yea, I sware 
unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee 
[which is equivalent to saying, ' I plighted thee my 
troth"], saith the Lord God, and thou becamest 
mine," and then in true Eastern language he pro- 
ceeded in the subsequent verses to describe the 
loving attentions which he had bestowed upon his 
people, even as a husband adorns and enriches his 
bride with beautiful and costly gifts. In like man- 
ner God speaks by his prophet, Hosea, 4 saying : 

1 54 : 5. 2 62 : 4, 5. 3 16 : 8. i 2 : 19, 20. 



140 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

"And I will betroth thee unto me for ever ; yea, I 
will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in 
judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies, I 
will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness : and 
thou shalt know the Lord." Through two whole 
chapters the prophet sets forth under this figure the 
unchanging love of God and the wicked unfaithful- 
ness of the people. 

Turning to the New Testament we find Christ 
suggesting the same truth in the parable of the 
marriage of the king's son, 1 and in the parable of 
the ten virgins who went forth to meet the bride- 
groom, 2 he himself being the Son of the supreme 
King, whose marriage was to be celebrated, and 
the divine Bridegroom, for whose return all men 
should be found watching when the cry rings out, 
"Behold, the bridegroom cometh." He also said, 
speaking of himself and his disciples, "Can the 
children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the 
bridegroom is with them ? But the days will come 
when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, 
and then shall they fast." John the Baptist em- 
ployed the same figure to express his appreciation 
of the character of Christ, and in a beautifully 
humble way his relation to him. " He that hath 
the bride is the bridegroom ; but the friend of the 
bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, re- 

1 Matt. 25 : I, seq. 2 Matt. 22 : I, seq. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I4I 

joiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice ; 
this my joy therefore is fulfilled." 

The Apostle Paul had a similar thought in his 
mind when he wrote to the Corinthian church, in 
deepest anxiety for their spiritual welfare. " For I 
am jealous over you with godly jealousy ; for I 
have espoused you to one husband, that I may 
present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." x 

And certainly none of us can ever forget that 
memorable passage in the Epistle to the Ephe- 
sians, 2 in which the apostle, feeling that he but half 
apprehended the great truth of which he was 
speaking, and that there was still much about it 
that was mysterious, makes the union of Christ and 
his church, and the relation between them, the 
basis of a sacred and tender appeal for domestic 
affection and the most intimate and thoughtful and 
self-forgetting attachment between husband and 
wife : 

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ 
is the head of the church ; and he is the Saviour of the 
body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so 
let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. 
Husbands love your wives, even as Christ also loved the 
church, and gave himself for it ; that he might sanctify and 
cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he 
might present it to himself a glorious church, not having 
spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing ; but that it should be 

1 2 Cor. 11:2. 2 5 : 22, seq. 



142 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their 
wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth 
himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh ; but 
nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. 
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his 
bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and 
mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two 
shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery ; but I speak 
concerning Christ and the church. 

We too, with the great apostle, may not be able 
to fathom the profound depth of this deep, deep 
truth. But there are some things that are plain. 
The force of the apostle's faithful and tender ap- 
peal for domestic love and fidelity depends upon 
the actual relation with himself into which Christ, 
the loving, thoughtful, self-denying Bridegroom, 
has taken his people, a relation of mutual affection, 
of beautiful regard, of costly service, of sacred fi- 
delity, and of indissoluble attachment, a relation as 
real as that of husband and wife, of two souls that 
have been made one. It hardly need be said that 
all domestic infelicity grows out of a forgetfulness of 
the mutual obligations involved in the sacred mar- 
riage tie, and that all Christian unfaithfulness is the 
result of indifference to the sublime fact of revela- 
tion that Christ is the husband of his church, which 
he loved unto death, that he might present it to 
himself a glorious church, holy and without blem- 
ish. 

Reference has already been made to the mar- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I43 

riage of the Lamb spoken of in the Apocalypse, 
and the robe of righteousness, clean and white as 
fine linen, in which the chosen bride was arrayed. 1 
The divinely inspired seer could find no more ac- 
curate and beautiful language in which to describe 
the glorious city of the redeemed, than this, "And 
I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband." 2 And he carried the 
thought through to the very end of Revelation, 
when in view of the wonderful unfolding of the grace 
and love of God for the whole human race in the 
gospel of Christ, he uttered his final word in the form 
of an earnest and repeated invitation to men every- 
where, "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come." 3 
It is the inestimable privilege of the bride of 
Christ, as an expression of her appreciation of his 
saving love and power and of her sympathy for all 
the lost ones for whom he died, to join her voice 
in the grand chorus of invitation, which is never to 
cease until the world shall come to its end. Then 
it will be seen how gloriously true are John's other 
words, "Blessed are they which are called unto the 
marriage supper of the Lamb." 4 

From all these reasons it is evident that this 
psalm may be confidently regarded as sketching 
typically the coming Messiah as the royal Bride- 

1 Rev. 19 : 7, 8. 2 Rev. 21:2. 3 Rev. 22 : 17. 4 Rev. 19 : 9. 



144 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

groom, the ever-living and ever-loving Husband of 
the whole church of God, who are to share with 
him the everlasting glory and the joy of heaven's 
marriage supper. 

The following words are borrowed from Pres- 
sense : 

The prophetic form is essentially symbolical. The 
prophet paints the future with the lineaments of the pres- 
ent, with the colors and the imagery furnished by the coun- 
try and the age to which he belongs. It is the only method 
by which he can be understood. The customs of his peo- 
ple, known events, compose for him a rich and brilliant 
language, by means of which he reproduces the revelations 
which he has received. 

It should be added that this psalm, after echo- 
ing the praises of the kingly bridegroom, "his more 
than human beauty, his persuasive eloquence, his 
might and prowess in war, his divine Majesty and 
the righteousness of his sway," and giving a de- 
scription of the royal bride, her beautiful garments 
indicative of her moral and spiritual loveliness, her 
virgin companions and the songs of w T edding joy 
as the procession advances, all of which give vivid- 
ness and reality to the picture, concludes with a 
prophecy of the increase of the kingdom of the 
Messiah, the perpetuity of his reign, and the 
princely character of all his subjects. " Instead of 
thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou may est 
make princes in all the earth. I will make thy 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 45 

name to be remembered in all generations : there- 
fore shall the people praise thee for ever and every 

Wellhausen acknowledges that these words "ap- 
pear to refer to a larger kingdom than Israel ever 
became." 

The mixed nature of the psalm, its local and 
also its prophetic application, is apparent in these 
words as elsewhere. Here the royal marriage is 
represented as resulting in a princely progeny of 
wide renown. But the psalmist is borne up and 
beyond the little local event and its consequences, 
and is led to use language which can only refer fit- 
tingly to the increase and duration of the Redeem- 
er's kingdom. Perowne has said : 

The sacred poet sees the earthly king and the human 
marriage before his eyes, but whilst he strikes his harp to 
celebrate these, a vision of a higher glory streams in upon 
him. Thus the earthly and the heavenly mingle. The di- 
vine penetrates, hallows, goes beyond the human ; but the 
human is there. 

In the psalm the children of the marriage main- 
tain their separate existence. In the gospel the 
church's increase becomes a part of itself, and adds 
an ever-expanding beauty and glory to the spiritual 
bride of Christ. In the psalm the children are ex- 
alted to be " princes in all the earth." In the gos- 
pel we are made by Christ to be "kings and priests 
unto God and his Father." In the psalm it is 
written, "therefore shall the people praise thee for 

K 



I46 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

ever." In the gospel we read, "to him be glory 
and dominion for ever and ever. Amen." In 
psalm and gospel we have the picture of the divine 
Bridegroom, fairer than all the children of men, 
who will soon come to claim his chosen bride. 

Rejoice, rejoice, believers ! 

And let your lights appear ; 
The shades of eve are thickening, 

And darker night is near : 
The Bridegroom is arising, 

And soon he will draw nigh ; 
Up ! pray and watch and wrestle ! 

At midnight comes the cry. 

O wise and holy virgins, 

Now raise your voices higher, 
Till in your jubilations 

Ye meet the angel choir. 
The marriage feast is waiting, 

The gates wide open stand ; 
Up, up, ye heirs of glory ! 

The Bridegroom is at hand. 

Our hope and expectation, 

O Jesus, now appear ; 
Arise, thou Sun so longed for, 

O' er this benighted sphere ! 
With hearts and hands uplifted, 

We plead, O Lord, to see 
The day of earth' s redemption, 

And ever be with thee. 



CHAPTER VII 
PSALM XLVI 



VII 



As we have already seen in our study 
Psalm XLVI of the Messianic psalms, there are 
some psalms in which the Messiah himself is repre- 
sented as the speaker, for instance, 2, 16, and 22 ; 
and there are others in which he, his person, his 
mission, and his reign are distinctly the subject of 
discourse, as is apparent from their language, and 
from the quotations made from them by New Tes- 
tament writers. Such are 45, 72, and no. Indeed, 
with one exception, all the psalms which we have 
considered are quoted in the New Testament as re- 
ferable to Christ, leaving no doubt as to their Mes- 
sianic bearing and import. The language of that 
one exception is such as to make the application 
no less certain. 

There is another class of psalms, somewhat 
numerous, which predict, to quote the words of 
Professor Hackett : 

The universal prevalence of the worship of God, the ex- 
tension of his kingdom among all nations, and the promul- 
gation of a plan of mercy in which all mankind are to par- 
ticipate. Such predictions, as we learn from other passages 
in the Old Testament and from explanations in the New, 
were designed to be accomplished in Christ, and hence the 

149 



150 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

psalms in which they are found, are reckoned as Messianic. 
It is to be observed that such psalms at the same time con- 
sist of other contents, such as praises, prayers, exhortations, 
precepts, which the authors of the psalms utter, as the ex- 
pression of their own religious feelings and experience, and 
address more especially to those of their own time and dis- 
pensation. 

The other psalms already considered are Messianic in a 
concrete or personal sense. Those here referred to are 
Messianic impliedly, or in virtue of the necessary connec- 
tion between the events foretold and the appointed author 
of their accomplishment. 

They portray a condition of things which was to 
be brought about only under the Christian dispen- 
sation, when the gospel should be preached in all 
the world, and should everywhere be victorious. 
They described certain great, spiritual, world-wide 
results, and imply the coming and triumph of the 
Messiah as the divinely appointed means by which 
those results are to be secured. 

As has been said, this class of psalms is quite 
numerous. The Messianic expectation is con- 
stantly flashing out in the devotional literature of 
God's ancient people, and their hymns are full of 
the joy of a coming victory. 

Indeed, comparatively few of the psalms are wanting in 
some recognition, more or less distinct, of the era when 
Jehovah is to be acknowledged as the object of universal 
worship, and the light which shone forth from the sanctuary 
on Mt. Zion, is to spread farther and farther until it illu- 
mines the whole earth. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I 5 I 

A consummation to be realized only through the 
manifestation of the Messiah, who was to be the 
true light of the world. The predictive character 
of the Old Testament literature is too obvious to be 
disputed. Even De Wette, who certainly would 
not be tempted to overstate the matter, says : 

Long before Christ, the world in which he was to appear 
was prepared. The whole Old Testament is a great pro- 
phecy, a great type of him who was to come, and who did 
come. Who can deny that the holy seers of the Old Testa- 
ment saw, in spirit, long beforehand, the coming of Christ, 
and had presages of the new doctrine in prophetic anticipa- 
tions, varying in clearness ? The typological comparison of 
the Old Testament with the New was no unmeaning amuse- 
ment. And it is scarcely a mere accident that the evangel- 
ical history, in the more important points, runs parallel 
with the Mosaic. 

The psalms which have been regarded as Mes- 
sianic in this general sense by rabbinical and Chris- 
tian commentators alike, are : 46, 47, 48, 68, 89, 
93> 96, 97, 98, 102, 132, and others. The forty- 
sixth Psalm, which we are now to consider, and the 
two following ones, are hymns of triumph and re- 
joicing. They were evidently composed after some 
great victory, when God had signally interposed 
for the deliverance of his people, and they point 
forward to the final and glorious victory, after many 
a fierce conflict, of God and his people, and truth 
and righteousness in the world. 






152 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

It is possible that these three psalms were born of 
the same occasion, and of the same great national 
event, though there is the same difference of opinion 
as to what the particular occasion was that exists 
about the origin of many other psalms. Hengsten- 
berg and Delitzsch think it was the victory of Je- 
hoshaphat over the combined forces of the Moab- 
ites, Ammonites, and Edomites, whose invasion of 
Judah and miraculous overthrow are recorded in 
2 Chron. 20. But Perowne and many others refer 
it to the memorable destruction of the army of Sen- 
nacherib under the walls of Jerusalem. 

That proud host had swept the land. City after city had 
fallen into the power of the conqueror. The career of Sen- 
nacherib and his captains had been one uninterrupted suc- 
cess. The capital itself alone held out, and even there the 
enfeebled garrison seemed little likely to make a successful 
resistance. The swollen river had, in the language of the 
prophet, overflowed all its channels, and risen even to the 
neck. It was at this crisis that deliverance came. When 
there was no succor to be expected, when neither king nor 
army could help the city, God helped her. He, the Lord 
of Hosts, was in the midst of her, keeping watch over her 
walls and defending her towers. His angel went forth at 
dead of night, and smote the host of the Assyrians, and 
when men awoke in the morning, there reigned in that vast 
camp the silence and the stillness of death. Such a deliver- 
ance must have filled the whole nation with wonder and joy. 

It was some such deliverance, at that time or 
at some other, that inspired the unknown poet to 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 53 

break forth in ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving 
to God, clothed in words of marvelous strength and 
beauty. It should be added that it is utterly un- 
necessary to accept the suggestion of Wellhausen, 
and look for the occasion and explanation of the 
psalm as late as the third century before the 
Christian era, unless one is determined to dispute 
its accepted antiquity, and insist that it is a more 
modern production. Wellhausen says : 

A complete revolution in all the component parts of a 
great political system, such as was occasioned by Alexander 
the Great (33 (?) B. c), would explain this psalm, a shaking 
of the whole ancient world, leaving only Jerusalem un- 
shaken, and appearing to the Jews as Jehovah' s preparation 
for the Messianic kingdom, . . this is to be presupposed. 

He does not venture to assert that the conquests 
of Alexander were the occasion of the psalm, but 
suggests that they might explain it — a wholly 
gratuitous assumption. 

Looked at from merely a literary point of view, 
the psalm is a very remarkable one. " God is our 
refuge and strength, a very present help in trou- 
ble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth 
be removed, and though the mountains be carried 
into the midst of the sea ; though the waters 
thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains 
shake with the swelling thereof. There is a river, 
the streams whereof shall make glad the city of 
God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most 



154 TH E MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

High. God is in the midst of her ; she shall not 
be moved : God shall help her, and that right early. 
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved : lie 
uttered his voice, the earth melted. The Lord of 
hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is our refuge. 
Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desola- 
tions lie hath made in the earth. He maketh wars 
to cease unto the ends of the earth ; he breaketli 
the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder ; lie burn- 
etii the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that 
I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, 
I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts 
is with us ; the God of Jacob is our refuge." 

It is impossible to restrict such sublime language 
to any local occurrence, however important it may 
have been in Jewish history. The waters, to use 
the psalmist's figure, overflow the banks which 
would confine them, and flow out into the wider 
history of God's people, and flow on until that 
history shall culminate in their final victory and 
redemption from all evil, and deliverance from 
every foe. It is a profound saying of Bacon that, 

Divine prophecies, being of the nature of their author, 
with whom a thousand years are but as one day, are there- 
fore not fulfilled punctually at once, but have springing and 
germinant accomplishments. 

These predictive words, so grand and far-reach- 
ing, so full of confidence and of consolation, of 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 55 

conflict and of triumph, of wonder and of adora- 
tion, may be said to have had a hundred partial 
fulfillments, and yet not to be exhausted, not to 
have come even now to that final fulfillment which 
the inspired writer had in his far-reaching vision. 
There were undoubtedly partial fulfillments in the 
history of God's ancient people, which will account 
for the lack of unanimity in determining the par- 
ticular reference of the psalm. There was a par- 
tial fulfillment in the first Christian centuries, when 
Christ saved the life of his church, and multiplied 
it amid cruel and unrelenting heathen persecutions, 
— saved it from threatened extinction, and multi- 
plied it until it was exalted to the throne of the 
Caesars, and spread far and wide through the known 
world. Often in those early years the hunted and 
slaughtered disciples must have cried out, " God is 
our refuge and strength, a very present help in 
trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the 
earth be removed, and though the mountains be 
carried into the midst of the sea." There was a 
partial fulfillment in the beginning of the fifth cen- 
tury, when a wave of ruthless and repulsive bar- 
barism swept down upon the Church of Christ, and 
threatened the very existence of Christian civ- 
ilization. Those were the days of Vandals, and 
Huns, and Attila, "the scourge of God." Then 
must the followers of Christ have given expression 
to their faith in the memorable words, " God is in 



I56 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the midst of her ; she shall not be moved : God 
shall help her, and that right early. The heathen 
raged, the kingdoms were moved : he uttered his 
voice, the earth melted." 

There was a partial fulfillment two centuries 
later, when the rapidly growing Mohammedan 
power seemed to be encircling Christendom, and 
about to annihilate the Christian faith, until upon 
the plains between Tours and Poictiers, Charles 
Martel, by the favor of the Almighty, defeated the 
fanatical hosts and saved Europe from falling into 
the hands of the disciples of the false prophet of 
Arabia. Then the followers of the true religion 
must have exclaimed, " Come, behold the works of 
the Lord ; what desolations he hath made in the 
earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of 
the earth ; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the 
spear in sunder, he burneth the chariot in the fire." 

Luther's famous hymn, which afterward became 
the national hymn of the emancipated German 
people, 

Einfeste Burg ist unser Gott, 

was forged in the hot fires, the burning controver- 
sies of the Reformation period, and was based 
upon this psalm, in recognition of its partial fulfill- 
ment. There was a partial fulfillment when Eng- 
land across the channel was saved to Protestantism 
by the destruction of the Spanish Armada, when 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 57 

the tempest of God smote that formidable fleet, 
and scattered it, and wiped it from the face of the 
deep. In the presence of such a manifest divine 
interposition, Protestant England must have heard 
a voice out of the clouds saying, "Be still and 
know that I am God ; I will be exalted among the 
heathen : I will be exalted in the earth," and must 
have devoutly and believingly answered back, 
"The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob 
is our refuge." 

All these were but partial fulfillments. The 
psalm still points to the future. Its language still 
hangs loosely, like a garment too large, upon any 
and all events upon which it has been put. It 
waits to be filled out by the complete conquest of 
all enemies of God and his people, the universal 
enthronement of the Messiah King, and the uni- 
versal reign of peace among the nations of the 
earth. 

The psalm is divided into three strophes, each 
one of which ends with a Selah, and the last two 
close with a very significant refrain. 

In the first strophe (ver. 1-3), God is declared 
to be the sure defense of his people in all perils 
and at all times. No matter how fearful may be 
the commotions among men and nations, repre- 
sented by the moving earth, which ordinarily we 
call terra firma, and the mountains tumbling and 
sinking beneath the sea, the roaring and swelling 



I58 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

waves, at whose repeated blows the foundations of 
the hills are made to tremble — no matter how 
violent may be the assaults of evil, all forms of 
wickedness and misrule and anarchy, not only 
against personal character and peace, but against 
the basis of human government and social order 
and national integrity, and against the foundations 
of God's kingdom in the earth — God reigns, and 
we need not fear. He is mightier than the noise 
of many waters. God is our refuge and strength, 
a very present help in trouble. The same thought 
was expressed by Christ in New Testament lan- 
guage : "On this rock will I build my church, and 
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 

The second strophe (ver. 4-7) represents the 
peace of Zion as secured by the indwelling pres- 
ence of God, and the destruction of all her enemies. 
" Titer e is a river, the streams whereof shall make 
glad the city of God, the holy place of the taber- 
nacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of 
her ; she shall not be moved : God shall help her, 
and that right early.' Dr. Watts in his inspiring 
hymn, which is based upon this psalm, beginning, 
"God is the refuge of his saints," has two stanzas 
in which he interprets the fourth verse of the psalm: 

There is a stream, whose gentle flow 

Supplies the city of our God ; 
Life, love, and joy still gliding through, 

And watering our divine abode. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 59 

That sacred stream, thine holy word, 
Our grief allays, our fear controls ; 

Sweet peace thy promises afford, 

And give new strength to fainting souls. 

The sentiment of the hymn is true. These 
stanzas are a beautiful tribute to the power of 
God's word and its gracious promises, to sustain 
souls that are distressed and timid and faint. But 
that is not the thought of the psalm. It is not the 
word of God, but it is the presence of God himself, 
that is the source of the believer's and the church's 
confidence and peace. That river, with its ever- 
flowing and gladdening waters, represents God, the 
infinite and omnipresent Spirit, the abiding Pro- 
tector of his people. " God is in the midst of her, 
she shall not be moved : God shall help her when 
the morning dawns," which is a better translation. 
God shall help her " in the morning of redemption 
and triumph as opposed to the night of disaster 
and sorrow." Not in her own strength, and not in 
alliance with the world and its powers and its 
forces, but in the strength of the Almighty is the 
peace, the prosperity of the church. Whenever 
the Church has allied herself to the State, and 
entered into unholy wedlock with the civil power, 
hoping thereby to gain prestige and influence, she 
has been secularized and weakened, and the prog- 
eny has been only evil and disaster. Her life, her 
members, her resources are all and only spiritual. 



l60 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

She must depend evermore upon the residence and 
aid of the Spirit of God. The figure of the un- 
failing stream was here employed, says Calvin, 

That the faithful might learn that, without any aid from 
the world, the grace of God alone was sufficient for them. 
. . Therefore, though the help of God may but trickle to us 
in slender streams, we should enjoy a deeper tranquillity 
than if all the power of the world were heaped up all at 
once for our help. 

The third strophe (ver. 8— 1 1) sets before us God 
as presiding over all human conflicts, the tribal and 
national wars, that have decimated peoples, have 
incarnadined oceans and drenched continents with 
blood, and have filled, and may yet fill, villages and 
cities with sorrow and tears, and his purpose to be 
exalted to the throne of undisputed and peaceful 
and universal supremacy on the earth. This strophe 
then closes like the preceding one with the refrain, 
"The Lord of hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob 
is our refuge." 

The psalm contains, it will be noticed, three dis- 
tinct Messianic thoughts, which give to it its pro- 
phetic character and place in the Christological 
literature of the Old Testament. 

First, there is the universal recognition of God 
as the one, true, and only supreme Being distinctly 
predicted, and to be brought about, as we know, 
only by the universal prevalence of Christianity. 
The God of the Jews, whose sovereignty, spiritual 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 1 

nature, infinite wisdom and power, righteous and 
merciful character, were revealed by the prophets 
of the Old Testament and more fully revealed by 
the teachings of the New Testament, is to be ac- 
knowledged by the world as the God of the whole 
world : "Be still, and know that I am God : I will 
be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in 
the earth." This is the purpose of the Almighty, 
a purpose which was to be accomplished as Juda- 
ism was superseded by Christianity, and Christian- 
ity should be proclaimed among all nations and ac- 
cepted by them. All that was best and permanent 
in Judaism passed over into Christianity. Christ 
"came not to destroy, but to fulfill." Judaism is a 
decadent and powerless religion. Having rejected 
the fuller revelation of God, God rejected it and 
gave it over to judicial blindness. It has become 
more and more unspiritual, rationalistic, and mate- 
rialistic. It is no longer reckoned as an aggres- 
sive moral and spiritual force in the world. 

But its sublime monotheistic faith is enshrined in 
the heart of the Christian religion, and the fight now 
is not between Judaism and idolatry and heathenism, 
as it once was, but between Christianity and all 
other religions which, whatever small elements of 
truth they may contain, like grains of wheat in 
mountains of chaff, have no conception of God as 
a supreme, holy, and merciful Spirit, and are there- 
fore perversions of religion, religious in name, but 

L 



1 62 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

false in nature and harmful and deadening in their 
influence. They are not educating man toward a 
true, spiritual, and saving faith, but are tremendous 
obstacles to the progress of the true faith, as all 
Christian missionaries know to their sorrow. All 
study of these religions on their fields reveals their 
utter inability to reform and elevate social condi- 
tions or to regenerate and save the souls of men. 
They know not our God and possess not his truth. 
The fundamental purpose of all revealed religion is 
to make God known and secure his intelligent, de- 
vout, and loving acknowledgment. God says to all 
heathen religions and heathen teachers and philoso- 
phers, " Be still, and know that I am God : I will 
be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in 
the earth." Christ says, " I am the way, the truth, 
and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but 
by me." "Ye worship, ye know not what. . . But 
the hour cometh, and now is, when the true wor- 
shipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in 
truth." The universal recognition of God can only 
be brought about through the universal proclama- 
tion of Christ and triumph of Christianity. 

A second Messianic thought contained in the 
psalm is the universal reign of peace on earth : 
" He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth ; 
he break eth the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder ; 
he burnetii the chariot in the fire." Surely no one 
can say that this blessed predictive utterance has 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 63 

been completely fulfilled. We stand at the thresh- 
old of the twentieth century, yet our ears are dis- 
tressed with the sound of wars and rumors of wars 
coming from afar and near at hand. The air seems 
to be ringing with the cry, " To arms." On every 
side and constantly are busy preparations for threat- 
ened conflict, immense standing armies, the con- 
struction and purchase of war ships, the invention 
and manufacture of destructive explosives, the 
better defense of seaport towns, the careful meas- 
urement of available forces, everything that denotes 
that the cruel dogs of war may at any moment be 
let loose. The whole world seems to be waiting 
in breathless suspense. Almost every nation in 
Europe is standing at its guns, each eager for the 
acquisition of territorial advantage or suspicious of 
others' aggressions and ready to resort to arms at 
the slightest cause. 

Our own nation, in which perhaps the love of 
peace is stronger and more deeply rooted than in 
any- other, with the painful memories of the awful 
scenes of the sixties still fresh in mind, and still feel- 
ing the remains of the enormous burden of sorrow 
and of waste then endured, was plunged into a 
bloody conflict with Spain. No matter how hu- 
mane the motive which actuated our government, 
and how free from all ambition for territorial ex- 
pansion and the spirit of imperialism, no matter 
how justifiable and righteous the war may have 



164 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

seemed in view of the degraded and suffering con- 
dition of millions of our fellow-beings under the 
oppressive rule of Spain, it was still war, with its 
suffering and death on the battlefield and in the 
hospital. War for any cause is a horrible thing, 
to be resorted to only to secure freedom from un- 
righteous and grinding oppression or for national 
self-preservation. The united prayer of Christen- 
dom ascends to-day, as never before, May God save 
us from the waste, the destruction, the misery, the 
inhumanity of cruel war, which seems but a relic 
of a barbarous age and utterly opposed to the 
humane and enlightened sentiment of this late 
period of the Christian era. May God convert 
and subdue all savage tribes and make nominally 
Christian nations Christian indeed, lovers of peace 
and patient under supposed or real provocation, 
and help them to feel that the highest patriotism, 
like the highest manhood, may consist in self-mas- 
tery, not in a brutal trial of physical strength, but 
in a calm and dignified assertion of the right, and 
a willingness to submit the decision to peaceful 
arbitration and to the judgment of coming genera- 
tions and of Almighty God. 

There is no doubt what that judgment will be, 
for it is the better hope of mankind that wars shall 
come to an end ; aye, more, it is the purpose of the 
Almighty that they shall come to an end. "He 
maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth." 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 65 

The fulfillment of the prophecy still tarries, but it 
is certain to come, for it is a vital part of that Mes- 
sianic glory which is in due time to cover the earth. 
" They shall beat their swords into ploughshares 
and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall 
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they 
learn war anymore." The Messiah is the " Prince 
of Peace." When he was born into the world the 
angels sang a new anthem of " Peace on earth, 
good will to men." The ancient prophecy was re- 
announced. God's purpose leaped forward toward 
its fulfillment. The new doctrine should strike at 
the throat of all national hostility as well as per- 
sonal bitterness. The new kingdom should be 
founded in the brotherhood of nations as well as 
the brotherhood of man. It should be a kingdom 
of righteousness and joy and world-wide peace. 
Human history has too often, even in this Christian 
era, been written in blood. But a new chapter is 
coming, as the Messiah shall be enthroned in the 
hearts of men and in the councils of nations : 

Down the dark future, through long generations, 
The sounds of war grow fainter, and then cease ; 

And like a bell with solemn, sweet vibrations, 

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace!" 

Peace ! and no longer, from its brazen portals 
The blast of war' s great organ shakes the skies ! 

But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
The holy melodies of love arise. 



1 66 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

The proposition for a peace conference by the 
representatives of the great nations, issued by the 
Czar of Russia, cannot but be regarded as the 
most remarkable and hopeful event of the nine- 
teenth century. Whatever may have been the mo- 
tive which led to it, and the results to which it will 
lead, the fact that it was submitted to the foreign 
diplomatists at St. Petersburg will ever mark August 
24, 1898, as a memorable day in human history and 
as a bright omen of the approach of that era in the 
world's progress when Christian ideals of national 
life and greatness will be universally recognized and 
honored. The opening words of the imperial pro- 
position are profoundly significant : 

The maintenance of general peace and the possible re- 
duction of the excessive armaments which weigh upon all 
nations, present themselves in existing conditions to the 
whole world as an ideal toward which the endeavors of all 
governments should be directed. 

The concluding words are equally significant : 

This conference will be, by the help of God, a happy 
presage for the century which is about to open. It would 
converge into one powerful focus the efforts of all States 
sincerely seeking to make the great conception of universal 
peace triumph over the elements of trouble and discord, 
and it would, at the same time, cement their agreement by 
a corporate consecration of the principles of equity and 
right, whereon rest the security of States and the welfare 
of peoples. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 67 

Christian statesmanship has found no truer ex- 
pression since Christ taught and laid the founda- 
tions of his kingdom on the hills of Galilee. Such 
an expression from such a source is a most encour- 
aging augury of the complete triumph of the 
Prince of Peace among the nations of the earth. 

The third Messianic thought contained in the 
psalm is the presence and immanence of God 
among men. As we have already seen, the peace 
of Zion was made certain, because " God is in 
the midst of her." The suggestive refrain at the 
end of the second and third strophe is, " The Lord 
of hosts is with us." The Hebrew scholar will 
here quickly detect what seems to be the prophetic 
intimation of the language, which occurs also in 
Isa. 8 : 10. It is " Immanu " and " Immanuel." 
In the Gospel of Matthew, in the account of the 
birth of Christ, the Messiah, we read, "And shall 
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Im- 
manuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." 
The word is the same. Perowne says, " The bur- 
den alike of prophecy and psalm is Immanuel, 
God with us." The great message of the New 
Testament to the whole human race is Immanuel, 
God with us. 

God was with his ancient people by his Spirit, 
and spoke to them often and unmistakably by the 
mouth of his prophets. He was there in the burn- 
ing bush, in the shekinah of the tabernacle, and in 



1 68 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the pillar of cloud and of fire, as well as in the 
Angel of Jehovah, whom many believe to be the 
pre-existent Christ. But he came into new and 
closer and more appreciable relations to humanity 
when he was incarnated in Jesus Christ. He was 
no longer a God afar off, the invisible Spirit, too 
often unrecognized and unknown. He became 
visible, tangible, one of us, clothed with our hu- 
manity, living a real life, entering into our sorrows 
and our joys, our brother, a man whose biography 
could be written and published to the world, and 
whose death could make atonement for the sins of 
the whole human family. "The word became 
flesh, and dwelt among us." Christ was " God 
manifest in the flesh," and was so true and ade- 
quate a manifestation of God that he could say, 
with no thought of contradiction, "He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." 

And so it is that the thought of the psalmist, 
which was a very real and very comforting thought 
to him, and to^ those who with him truly appre- 
hended it, is sensibly fulfilled to us in the person of 
our divine Immanuel. God has come into human 
life and into human history. We can see his foot- 
steps, we can trace his influence, we can look upon 
his mighty deeds, we can hear his words of match- 
less wisdom, Ave can feel his presence and his sym- 
pathy. 

We repeat the old psalm with a new and richer 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 69 

and fuller meaning since Christ was born. It sig- 
nified much to him who wrote it ; it signifies vastly 
more to us. " God is with us " in the progress of hu- 
manity and its divine unfolding purpose, for he has 
identified himself with it. "God is with us" in the 
history of nations, for he became a Jew, and wept over 
Jerusalem. " God is with us" in the life of the church, 
for he laid its foundations in his blood, he became 
himself its corner-stone and the bishop of souls. 
" God is with us " in our personal experiences, for 
he is our brother and Saviour, our refuge under the 
consciousness of sin, our strength in the midst of 
all temptations, a very present help in trouble. 
Therefore will not we fear, whatever may be our 
present lot, and whatever may befall us. " God is 
with us " under our present burden, and in the un- 
known events of the future. " God is with us " in 
life and in death, in time and eternity. "Yea, 
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy 
rod and thy staff they comfort me." "Thou shalt 
guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive 
me to glory." 



CHAPTER VIII - 
SPECIAL MESSIANIC QUOTATIONS 



VIII 

In addition to the psalms which we 
Special have examined and found to refer 

dotations to . the Messiah ' some of them con - 

taining distinct statements of his 

character, mission, and dominion, and others fore- 
telling a condition of things, social, moral, and re- 
ligious, to be brought about only by the universal 
proclamation and acceptance of the gospel, there 
are numerous single verses scattered throughout 
the book of Psalms, and quoted in the New Testa- 
ment as specially applicable to Christ, or intention- 
ally prophetic of him. Our study of the Mes- 
sianic psalms would not be complete without some 
consideration of these scattered foregleams of the 
coming Messiah. They have reference to both 
aspects of Christ's personal character and work, as 
conqueror and sufferer, as supreme King with 
world-wide dominion, and as divinely appointed 
Priest offering atonement for the sins of mankind. 
These separate verses, like most of the passages 
which we have reviewed, and indeed like the ma- 
jority of the passages in the Old Testament quoted 
by writers of the New Testament as referable to 
Christ, had a local and contemporaneous applica- 

i73 



fh 



174 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

tion, a primary meaning, a partial fulfillment in 
some person or event near at hand, though it is so 
difficult to determine what the local application or 
fulfillment was, that often there is no unanimity of 
judgment among biblical scholars. Dr. Franklin 
Johnson, in his able volume entitled " The Quota- 
tions of the New Testament from the Old," says : 

The writers of the New Testament often treat as relating 
to the Messiah and his kingdom passages written with ref- 
erence to persons who lived, and events which happened, 
centuries before the Christian era. There are direct Mes- 
sianic predictions in the Old Testament, like Isa. 8 : 23 ; 
9 : 1, 2 ; Zech. 9 : 9-17. The predictions of this kind, 
however, are relatively few in number, and usually the pas- 
sages quoted in the New Testament as pointing forward to 
Christ were occasioned by some person or event contem- 
porary with the prophet. 

This double reference has been accepted by the 
great body of devout scholars, and more than that, 
it has been shown to have its illustrations in all lit- 
erature, ancient and modern. Christ and the 
writers of the New Testament have given to it 
their emphatic and unquestionable endorsement. 

The importance of a recognition of the large 
place which the Messianic element occupies in the 
Old Testament, has been well set forth by Rev. 
Stanley Leathes, in the "Boyle Lectures" for 1868 : 

It does not admit of any reasonable doubt that our Lord 
himself believed and taught that the Old Testament Scrip- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 75 

hires spoke of a Messiah. This position is involved in the 
whole tissue of the New Testament If, therefore, it was a 
false one, then the conclusion is inevitable that the evangel- 
ists and apostles, nay, even that Christ himself, built a large 
portion of their teaching upon a false foundation. Their 
premises were unsound. The argument that Jesus was the 
Christ of the Old Testament was worth nothing, if, as a 
matter of fact, the Old Testament did not speak of any 
Christ. To assert this, is practically to sweep away more 
than half the basis on which the apostles rest the fabric of 
their doctrine. 

Similar language has been used by Dr. E. P. 
Barrows, showing that the large Messianic element 
in the Old Testament has entered largely and 
vitally into the organic structure of the New Testa- 
ment : 

That in Christ were fulfilled the prophecies of the Old 
Testament, appears in every variety of form in the Gospel 
narratives. It constituted, so to speak, the warp into which 
the Saviour wove his web of daily instruction. Now, if a 
single thread, unlike all the rest in substance and color, 
had found its way into this warp, we might, perhaps, re- 
gard it as foreign and accidental ; but to dissever from our 
Lord's words all his references to the prophecies concerning 
himself in the Old Testament, would be to take out of the 
web all the threads of the warp, and then the web itself 
would be gone. 

It may be said in general about the quotations 
in the New Testament, that they follow the same 
laws which prevail in other literatures. They are 
made largely from the Septuagint version, with 



iy6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

which the writers were most familiar. They are 
sometimes fragmentary and sometimes composite, 
exactly like the quotations from the Bible and other 
books which speakers and literary men are making 
to-day. They are sometimes quotations from mem- 
ory, and sometimes quotations of the substance 
of the passage, rather than the exact language, 
as is often the case in modern times, and was 
necessarily the case when copies of the Scriptures 
were not numerous, and frequently were not near 
at hand. 

It has often been remarked, how wonderfully the 
inspired writers have been preserved from falling 
into error in their frequent use of the Old Testa- 
ment. It is not too much to say that the Spirit of 
truth, whom Christ promised to them, was present 
with them to aid them in their composition, and to 
"lead them into all the truth." A candid examin- 
ation of the Xew Testament quotations will show 
them to be remarkably pure and true to the origi- 
nal thought, even when the lanonacre has not been 
perfectly repeated. They constitute a great bod}', 
and are employed alike for argument and illustra- 
tion. Prof. C. H. Toy mentions one hundred and 
thirty-seven quotations from the book of Psalms 
alone, making almost one for each psalm. Dr. 
Howard Osgood mentions two hundred and thirty- 
nine passages which are quoted or referred to. It 
is impossible to find such a body of quotations in 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 77 

any volume of addresses or sermons, in which a 
like accuracy has been preserved. Indeed, it is a 
canon of rhetoric, and an oft-repeated note of warn- 
ing among literary men — "Verify your quotations." 
Such uniform accuracy on the part of the New Tes- 
tament writers, together with Christ's promise of 
aid to them by the Holy Spirit, which could not 
have been an unmeaning promise to those who 
were called to be the expounders of divine and sav- 
ing truth to the world, prepares us to accept con- 
fidently their interpretation of Old Testament lan- 
guage as applicable to Christ, the Messiah, even 
though it had a local reference and application. 

Dr. Franklin Johnson, in his volume, devotes its 
longest chapter, extending through one hundred 
and fifty pages, to the interesting topic, " Double 
Reference." He rightly objects to the term "dou- 
ble sense," and insists upon the term "double 
reference," as growing out of the universally ac- 
knowledged typical relation of the Old Testament 
to the New. He quotes Alford as saying : 

No word prompted by the Holy Ghost had reference to 
the utterer only. All Israel was a type ; all spiritual Israel 
set forth "the second man," " the quickening Spirit" ; all 
the groanings of God's suffering people prefigured and 
found their fullest meaning in his groans who was the chief 
in suffering. The maxim cannot be too firmly held or too 
widely applied, that all the Old Testament utterances of the 
Spirit anticipate Christ, just as all his New Testament utter- 
ances set forth and expound Christ : that Christ is every- 

M 



I78 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

where involved in the Old Testament, as he is everywhere 
evolved in the New Testament. 

To miss this intimate relation and connection be- 
tween the two Testaments, is to miss the great 
truth that we have in the Bible the progressive 
revelation of God to the world, a revelation in- 
spired and guided by one Spirit, and that Spirit 
the Spirit of Him who was its sublime purpose and 
end, and whose grace and salvation were to be 
made known by it to lost men. This is the thought 
that finds expression in those very remarkable 
words of the Apostle Peter: "Of which salvation 
the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, 
who prophesied of the grace that should come unto 
you ; searching what, or what manner of time the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when 
it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and 
the glory that should follow." It was one inspiring 
Spirit, one controlling personality, one divine re- 
vealer in it all. The Spirit of the Christ of the New 
Testament is declared to have been in the prophets 
who spoke in the Old Testament, suggesting, fore- 
shadowing, predicting, " testifying beforehand," by 
type and symbol, event and utterance, what was to 
be explained, unfolded, fulfilled in the New Testa- 
ment. From this fact has arisen that accepted 
axiom of all Christendom, " In vetere novum latet, 
in novo vetus patet" And it is this unquestion- 
able fact that gives to so much of the ritual and 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 79 

history, biography and song of God's ancient peo- 
ple a future as well as a contemporary reference. 
Professor Briggs, while denying the " double sense" 
theory, admits a "double reference" view in these 
words : 

But inasmuch as the prediction advances from the tem- 
poral redemption of its circumstances to the eternal re- 
demption of the Messiah, and it is a part of a series of pre- 
dictions in which the experience of redemption is advanc- 
ing, it cannot be otherwise than that some of the elements 
of the predicted redemption should be realized in historical 
experience ere the essential elements of the Messianic re- 
demption are attained. 

Illustrations of this double reference " have 
been adduced by Doctor Johnson from all literatures, 
ancient and modern, from yEschylus, Homer, Vir- 
gil, Dante, Goethe, Schiller, La Fontaine, Moliere, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, Longfellow, and 
many others. Indeed, he says that " a literature 
would hardly be worthy of the name, that did not 
often present to the reader sudden ascensions from 
the low to the lofty, from the actual to the ideal, 
from the obvious and commonplace to the region 
of all dreams and imaginations and hopes." Such 
double reference, therefore, in the Jewish Scriptures 
is in harmony with the usage of all best literature, 
as well as inevitable from the professedly anticipa- 
tory and typical nature of the religion and history 
of the children of Israel. 



180 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

What had been said seemed necessary in order 
to meet any possible objection to the Messianic in- 
terpretation of certain passages in the Psalms by 
the New Testament writers. 

Let us turn now to Ps. 8:5, 6, which reads : 
" For thou hast made hint a little lower than the 
angels, a?id hast crowned him with glory and honour. 
Thou madcst him to have .dominion over the works 
of thy hands ; thou hast put all tilings under his 
feet." The Hebrew word translated ''angels" 
probably means God, and the passage undoubtedly 
refers to the statement in the first chapter of Gen- 
esis, that man was created in the image of God. 
It is a recognition of the divine origin of man, of 
his moral dignity and his supremacy in all the realm 
of the animal kingdom. The statement sets forth 
the primal glory of God's highest creature, man, 
and not his present fallen condition in sin. De- 
litzsch speaks of it as " a lyric echo of the Mosaic 
account of the creation." It contains also the pur- 
pose of God in man's creation and the promise of 
a supremacy that is to be complete. This is the 
opinion of able commentators, and this is the inter- 
pretation of the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
brews, 1 who quotes from the Septuagint version in- 
stead of the Hebrew, saying "angels" instead of 
" God," if that is the true meaning of the Hebrew 



6-9. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 151 

word. He is speaking of Christ as the typical man, 
in whom the destiny of humanity was to be realized. 
It is an acknowledgment of his humiliation, and at 
the same time of his glory. The language in his 
view pointed backward to the creation of Adam, 
and forward to the redemption of Christ. Man 
does not now occupy the place for which God in- 
tended him. His purpose in creation is not yet 
fulfilled. We see not yet all things put under him, 
but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than 
the angels or God (the argument is the same which- 
ever word is used), we see'him who identified him- 
self with humanity, who took human nature into 
his embrace and became its head, its representa- 
tive, its ideal impersonation, we see him, already 
" crowned with glory and honor." The language 
of the psalm contains not only the exalted purpose 
of God in man's creation, but a distinct prophecy 
of the fulfillment of that purpose in the Messiah, 
who was the ideal man, the Son of man as well as 
the Son of God, and whose ultimate and complete 
supremacy is foretold in psalm and prophecy, in 
Gospel and Epistle. 1 

Professor Cheyne's comment acknowledges the 
perfect naturalness of this reference of the psalm to 
Christ as the ideal man. 

Man, in short, is idealized, for (to apply the words of 
1 See also I Cor. 15 : 25-27 ; Eph. I : 22. 



152 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Heb. 2 : 8) " we see not yet all things made subject to him." 
How natural it was, and (as Doctor Westcott has shown) 
how natural it is, to apply this psalm to Christ, the Son of 
man ! But there is an application still nearer to the letter 
of the text, viz, to regenerate humanity (which St Paul 
would call '* the body of Christ"). The psalm is virtually 
a prophecy of the glorification of the race. 1 

Yes, but not apart from Christ, to whom the psalm 
is declared to point, and in whom it was evidently- 
fulfilled. The hope of a glorified humanity rests 
upon him, "Who was made a little lower than the 
angels for the suffering of death, . . that he by the 
grace of God should taste death for every man." 

The words of Ps. 3 1 : 5, " Into thy hand I com- 
mit my spirit" were quoted by our Lord, when 
about to expire upon the cross. 2 They can hardly 
be said, however, to have been a distinct prophecy 
of that scene, but rather an expression of the calm 
and unshaken faith of all devout souls when they 
stand face to face with death and the unseen world, 
and are sustained by their hope in the unchanging 
love and uninterrupted care of the Father of our 
spirits. Similar words were spoken by the first 
martyr, Stephen, when the stones did their cruel 
work. 

In Ps. 34 : 20 it is written, " He keepeth all his 
bones : not one of them is broken" In the account 
of the crucifixion of our Saviour, as given by John, 

1 Comp. 2 Peter 1:4. 2 Luke 23 : 46. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 83 

it is said that the Roman soldiers finished their 
work of death by breaking the legs of the com- 
panions of Christ, " But when they came to Jesus, 
and saw that he was dead already, they brake not 
his legs" ; and then it is significantly added, "For 
these things were done, that the Scripture should 
be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken." ] 
Professor Toy thinks that the probable reference is 
to the language of the psalm, John giving a special 
and impliedly unwarranted application to Christ of 
a general statement of " the care that God exer- 
cises over his servants, so that not one of their 
bones is broken." But it is altogether more likely, 
if not absolutely certain, that the reference is to 
the institution of the Jewish Passover, and the in- 
structions for the preparation of the lamb to be 
eaten, 2 " Neither shall ye break a bone thereof." 
John's Gospel is the one that holds up before us 
Christ as " The Lamb of God, which taketh away 
the sin of the world," and he would be especially 
likely to notice the omission of the soldiers, and 
the fulfillment of the typical rite in Christ. It was 
the time of the Passover, when the crucifixion took 
place. We are told that, " In preparing the lamb 
for roasting, the Jews ran spits through it in the 
form of a cross, as the Samaritans do to this day." 
The paschal lamb is declared not only by John, but 

1 John 19 : 36. 2 Exod. 12 : 46 ; Num. 9 : 12. 



1 84 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

by Peter and Paul, to be the prefigure of Christ 
Christ is "our Passover." He was a true paschal 
lamb. The prophetic Scripture was fulfilled, "A 
bone of him shall not be broken." When in cele- 
brating the Lord's Supper it is said : " This is my 
body, which is broken for you," a mistake is com- 
mitted. The word "broken" is not found in the 
original. It has been inserted in the translation. 
The broken bread represents the wounded, the 
bruised body of Jesus, but not his broken body. 
We conclude, therefore, that John did not refer to 
the language of the psalm as containing a prophecy 
of Christ. It was not a general reference to the gen- 
eral care of God over the life of his servants, but a 
particular reference to the provision which God 
has made in Christ for the salvation of his people. 
Godet's comment is as follows : 

It refers to the manifestation of the Messianic character 
of Jesus. . . To understand what John felt at the moment 
which he here recalls, we must suppose a believing Jew, 
familiar with the Old Testament, seeing the soldiers ap- 
proach, who are to break the legs of the three victims. He 
asks himself anxiously what is to be done to the body of 
the Messiah, which is still more sacred than the paschal 
lamb. And lo ! simultaneously and in the most unexpected 
manner this body is rescued from the brutal operation which 
threatened it. 

In Ps. 40 : 6-8 it is written, " Sacrifice and offer- 
ing thou didst not desire ; mine ears hast thou 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 85 

opened : burnt offering and sin offering hast thou 
not required. Then said /, Lo, I come : in the vol- 
ume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do 
thy willy my God : yea, thy law is within my 
hearth These words undoubtedly had a primary 
reference to the psalmist himself. He had learned 
the important lesson which God was ever seeking 
to teach his people, that obedience was better than 
sacrifice, that the costliest offerings and the most 
exact performance of the most elaborate ritual were 
all unavailing, unless there was present a heart 
devout, sincere, spiritual, and cheerfully obedient 
to all the known will of God. Animal sacrifices 
were empty and valueless, a very mockery, unless 
there was the living sacrifice of one's self upon 
God's altar of service. If the psalm was written 
by David, whose name it bears, it is in entire har- 
mony with that other psalm of his, the fifty-first, in 
which he says : " For thou desirest not sacrifice ; 
else would I give it : thou delightest not in burnt 
offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken 
spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou 
wilt not despise." Penitence, obedience, the lov- 
ing heart, the consecrated and godly life, these are 
the things which distinguish true worshipers, these 
are the things which are acceptable to God. So 
the psalmist had learned, and according to this 
rule he undoubtedly endeavored to order his life. 
But the psalm was to find its perfect illustration 



1 86 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He would show in 
himself not only the superiority of spiritual worship 
and obedience to all sacrificial offerings, but the 
completion and termination of the outward rites 
and ceremonies of the Mosaic religion in the one 
sacrifice of himself, and the universal substitution 
of the worship of the heart and of the life. This 
was the sublime purpose of Christ's coming into 
the world, to make all men spiritual worshipers and 
loyally obedient to the Supreme Will of the uni- 
verse. The central thought of the psalm was to 
find its perfect expression in the coming Messiah. 
So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews de- 
clares. It was as if Christ had announced, at his 
advent, "The days of your ritualism are ended ; 
the old dispensation has accomplished its prepara- 
tory and educational purpose : sacrifices are forever 
done away in my death ; the consecration of the 
spirit in devout faith and cheerful obedience, as 
illustrated in my earthly life, is the one supreme 
characteristic of all true religion the world over." 
In Heb. 10 : 5-7, the words of the psalm in a pe- 
culiar sense are attributed to "Christ : "Wherefore, 
when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice 
and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast 
thou prepared me : In burnt offerings and sacri- 
fices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then, said 
I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is 
written of me) to do thy will, O God." 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 87 

These words are quoted from the Septuagint ver- 
sion, with which the writer was familiar. One varia- 
tion from the Hebrew has occasioned much dis- 
cussion. Instead of " mine ears hast thou opened," 
the Epistle reads, " a body hast thou prepared me," 
which Professor Toy thinks "comes probably from 
a scribal corruption of the Greek text" in the Sep- 
tuagint. In the Hebrew the difference between 
the two readings is so slight that one might easily 
be mistaken for the other. It has been suggested 
by De Wette that if the Septuagint had translated 
it " ears hast thou prepared me," the thought which 
the New Testament writer finds in the passage 
would have been unimpaired. It may be that the 
translator simply substituted the whole for a part, 
" body" for " ears," which would not have changed 
the sense of the passage. If a man's body has 
been prepared as an instrument to do God's will, 
all the separate* members will be ready to do their 
various functions, the ears to hear, the eyes to see, 
the hands to perform, and the feet to run in the 
way of God's commandments. It cannot be said 
that the writer of the Epistle takes any advantage 
of the use of the word " body," and carries the 
thought beyond the exact meaning of the psalm, 
as he might have been tempted to do by the nature 
of his argument. Tholuck, as stated by Dr. John 
Pye Smith, observes that the offering of the body 
of Christ is not by any means the thing implied in 



1 88 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the argument of the apostle in itself and solely. 
It was the entire obedience of Christ in all his 
affections, actions, life, and death — of which the 
sufferings of the mere bodily frame were but the 
last term — that constituted his inestimable sacrifice. 
He cites the excellent passage of Calvin : 

The apostle follows the Septuagint, a body, etc. ; for the 
writers were not superstitious in the reciting of sentences 
quoted, only they took care not to make erroneous applica- 
tions of the Old Testament to serve their own convenience. 
We should constantly keep in view what was their purpose 
in making any citation ; for in having respect to that pur- 
pose they were diligently scrupulous not to put upon the 
Scripture any sense other than its own proper meaning ; but 
with respect both to mere words and to some other circum- 
stances which are not now our subject, they allowed them- 
selves a just and rational liberty. 

Dr. Franklin Johnson has well remarked : 

It should be added that the underlying sense of the phrase 
in the Septuagint is the same with that of the Hebrew 
phrase, though the language is so different. The Hebrew 
says, "Mine ears hast thou opened," that is, to hear the 
divine voice in an obedient spirit. The Septuagint says, 
"A body didst thou prepare for me," that is, as an organ, 
by means of which I may obey the divine voice. Thus in 
both cases the obedience of Christ unto death is presented 
to the reader as the substitute for the sacrifices of the Mosaic 
dispensation. This is maintained by all critics of all schools. 
The writer of the Epistle, therefore, might have employed 
the phrase of the Septuagint with some emphasis ; and his 
refusal to do so is an interesting evidence of his scrupulous 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 89 

care to keep within the bounds of propriety in the use of 
the Old Testament. 

Perowne thinks that the words of the psalm 

Are not quoted as a prophecy which was fulfilled in Christ, 
but the writer finds words which once expressed the devo- 
tion of a true Israelite to be far more strikingly expressive, 
indeed in their highest sense only truly expressive, of the 
perfect obedience of the Son of God. All true words of 
God' s saints of old, all high and holy aspirations, however 
true and excellent in their mouths, went far beyond them- 
selves and found their perfect consummation only in him 
who was the perfect man, 

These words would be true of many quotations ; 
but in this instance they fail to represent the full 
thought of the New Testament writer. For he uses 
the quotation not so much as an illustration as an 
argument. 

The language of Dr. John Pye Smith gives an 
accurate interpretation of the passage and seems 
none too strong : 

The terms of the passage appear to require absolutely the 
sense of the abrogation of the animal sacrifices, by a per- 
son who declares that the very book which prescribed those 
sacrifices had its superior reference to him, and that he him- 
self would present the only sacrifice that should be worthy 
of the Deity to accept. I must despair of ever acquiring 
consistent knowledge or satisfaction on any subject of ra- 
tional inquiry ; I must give up the first principles of evi- 
dence as to prophecy and interpretation and renouncing 
all sober rules of interpretation, commit myself to the ex- 



I90 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

travagance of fancy and arbitrary dictates if this be not a 
clear and characteristic description of the Messiah. The 
summary of the psalm which Michaelis prefixes to his trans- 
lation well expresses its design and character : " A great per- 
son, who describes himself as the only offering acceptable 
to God, and to whom Moses alluded in all his laws about 
sacrifices, in his sufferings prays to God, expects help from 
him, and promises to glorify his name. Thus the person 
who speaks is not David, but one greater than he, even 
Christ, the great sacrifice for the human race." 

In Ps. 41 : 9 we find these words which appear 
again, in part, in the New Testament narrative : 
" Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, 
which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel 
against me." These words were prompted by some 
personal incident in the psalmist's experience, where 
his confidence had been misplaced and one who 
had shared his favor and his hospitality had proved 
false at heart and basely deceitful and treacherous. 
These words are quoted by Christ, as recorded by 
John, as having been fulfilled in the treachery of 
Judas. Christ, however, omits the first part of the 
verse, as if he would not admit that there was any 
time when he trusted Judas and did not know the 
deceitfulness of his heart. In John 13 : 18 we 
read : "I speak not of you all : I know whom I 
have chosen : but that the Scripture may be ful- 
filled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up 
his heel against me." Professor Toy says : "Ac- 
cording to the account given in John, the psalm is 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS I9I 

regarded by Jesus as Messianic, and these words 
applied to the treachery of Judas." As to the 
meaning which should be ascribed to the words, 
"that it may be fulfilled," in this place and prob- 
ably in some other places, the remark of Perowne 
is eminently wise and candid : 

It is evident that "the Scripture is fulfilled" not merely 
when a prediction receives its accomplishment, but when 
words descriptive of certain circumstances in the life of 
the Old Testament saints finds a still fuller and truer reali- 
zation — one not foreseen by the psalmist, yet one no less de- 
signed by God — in the circumstances of our Lord' s earthly 
life. 

The most that can be said is, that this psalm is 
Messianic in the sense that, according to Christ's 
statement, David and his pretended friend were 
typical of Jesus and the traitor. 

Godet's opinion is expressed as follows : 

Ps. 41, from the tenth verse of which this quotation is 
taken, is but indirectly Messianic ; its immediate subject is 
the just man in affliction, but this ideal is only perfectly 
realized in the suffering Messiah. Among the troubles 
which befall the righteous, the psalmist (David according to 
the title, Jeremiah according to Hitzig), places in the front 
rank the treachery of an intimate friend. In the mouth 
of David this would refer to Ahithophel. This last stroke, 
Jesus would say, cannot fail to reach me also, in whom all 
the sorrows as well as all the virtues of the righteous suf- 
ferer are combined. This is, in the context, the meaning 
of the formula : "That the Scripture might be fulfilled." 



192 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Ps. 68 is acknowledged to be Messianic in its 
general scope according to principles explained 
in the last chapter. It anticipates a condition of 
things to be brought about only through the uni- 
versal prevalence of Christianity. Indeed, it is a 
magnificent hymn, portraying in language of mar- 
velous strength and beauty the onward march of 
God's kingdom among the nations. Some have 
seen in it only a direct prophecy of Christ and his 
reign and no local reference whatever, believing it 
to foretell in vivid and splendid imagery his advent 
upon earth, the blessed effect of his truth, his res- 
urrection and ascension into heaven, and his do- 
minion and reign. Other scholars, properly regard- 
ing it as occasioned by some local event, differ 
widely and irreconcilably as to its primary applica- 
tion. But all acknowledge the vigor, the richness, 
the rhetorical splendor of the psalm, and that it re- 
quired a poet of extraordinary genius to compose 
it. Why not David, the sweet singer, the royal 
bard, the inspired laureate of Israel, to whom it is 
ascribed? Greece had but one Homer, Italy but 
one Dante, England but one Shakespeare, and 
Israel but one David. It is impossible not to re- 
cognize the Messianic spirit which pervades the 
psalm and the Messianic hope and expectation 
which inspired it and pulsate in many of its utter- 
ances. It pictures to us the victorious march and 
glorious entry of God into his sanctuary on Zion. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 193 

This is described under figures borrowed from the triumph 
of an earthly conqueror who, after having vanquished his 
enemies and taken possession of their country, marches in 
solemn procession at the head of his troops to occupy the 
city which he had selected as his capital and the seat of 
empire, . . where he reigns in . . . universal dominion, 
acknowledged and feared by all the nations of the earth. 

Only a few specimen verses can be given to show 
the power, the sweep, the sublimity of the lan- 
guage. Notice how majestically the psalm opens : 

"Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered. . . 
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away : as 
zvax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish 
at the presence of God. 

"But let the righteous be glad ; let them rejoice 
before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. Sing 
unto God, sing praises to his name : extol him that 
rideth upon the heavens by Ids name J AH, and re- 
joice before him." 

The beneficence of his reign is thus set forth : 

" A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the 
widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth 
the solitary in families : he bringeth out those which 
are bound with chains." 

The terrible power and successful purpose of 
God are thus expressed : 

" O God, when thou wentest forth before thy 
people, when thou didst march through the wilder- 
ness ; the earth shook, the heavens also dropped at 
the presence of God." 

N 



194 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

" The cliariots of God are twenty tlwusand, even 
thousands of angels." 

" Why leap ye, ye high hills ? this is the hill 
which God desireth to dwell in ; yea, the Lord will 
dwell in it for ever." 

" TJwu hast ascended on high, thou hast led cap- 
tivity captive : thou hast received gifts for men. . . 
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with bene- 
fits, even the God of our salvation." 

His universal dominion is declared in these words : 

" Princes shall come out of Egypt ; Ethiopia shall 
soon stretch out her hands unto God. Sing unto 
God, ye kingdo7ns of the earth ; sing praises unto 
the Lord." 

Such is the power, the benevolence, the glory, 
the dominion of God, proclaimed and manifested, 
realized and accomplished, as never before, through 
the incarnation, the doctrine, the death, the resur- 
rection, and ascension of our Saviour, to whom 
" be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both 
now and for ever." 

Although the psalm is so strongly Messianic, there 
is but a single direct quotation from it in the New 
Testament. In Eph. 4 : 8 the Apostle Paul quotes 
the eighteenth verse in this way : " Wherefore he 
saith, When he ascended up on high, he led cap- 
tivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." The in- 
spired apostle applies the words clearly to the res- 
urrection and ascension of our Lord and to the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 1 95 

glorious results of his earthly mission. The ascent 
of the ark of the Lord, which was the symbol of 
Jehovah's presence, into Mount Zion, prefigured 
the ascent of Christ into heaven. And as the tri- 
umphal procession of the returning victor brought 
with it the captives and the spoils to be distributed 
among the people, so Christ returning from the 
conflict and the conquest of earth is represented as 
bringing his captives with him, sin and death and 
hell, and all the powers of evil chained, as it were, 
to his triumphal chariot, and also the rich spoils of 
life and immortality, an abundance of gifts to be 
distributed freely among the children of men. 

The word in the psalm is "received," which, ac- 
cording to Meyer, means received in order to give. 
The apostle takes the full thought in its application 
to Christ and says "gave." He, the crucified and 
ascended Lord, has come into possession of all 
spiritual treasure, and lives and reigns that he may 
dispense it to a needy world. A true king receives 
that he may impart. He takes in order to give. 
What are some of his gifts to men ? Christ gave 
the Holy Spirit to " convince the world of sin, of 
righteousness, and of judgment." "If I go, I will 
send him unto you." He gave the Christian min- 
istry and appointed it to its necessary service. " And 
he gave some, apostles, and some, prophets, and 
some, evangelists, and some, pastors and teachers, 
for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of 



I96 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

ministering, for the edifying of the body of Christ." 
He gives the peace of forgiveness to all penitent 
and believing souls. " Peace I leave with you, my 
peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, 
give I unto you." He gives the water of salvation 
unto all thirsty ones. "The water that I shall give 
him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up 
into everlasting life." He gives all things that are 
needful to secure purity and steadfastness in the 
Christian profession. "According as his divine 
power hath given unto us all things that pertain 
unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of 
him that hath called us to glory and virtue, whereby 
are given unto us exceeding great and precious 
promises." He gives to all obedient followers that 
fullness and richness and expansion of life which is 
called eternal life. " My sheep hear my voice, and 
I know them, and they follow me ; and I give unto 
them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither 
shall any man pluck them out of my hand." He 
gives to all weak and struggling disciples the assur- 
ance of final and complete victory. "Thanks be 
to God, who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

" He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto 
men." So said the psalmist and so says the New 
Testament. Since his ascension this has been his 
kingly occupation. We may all, if we will, share 
in the priceless gifts of the ascended Son of God. 



CHAPTER IX 

SPECIAL MESSIANIC QUOTATIONS 
(continued) 



IX 



There are a few more special refer- 
Special ences to Christ in the Psalms which 

Messianic haye been ted b New Testa _ 

Quotations n J 

ment writers, which it will be neces- 
sary for us to consider in order to make our review 
of them fairly complete. Quite a number of 
psalms which are full of the Messianic hope and 
point clearly to the coming of the kingdom and 
triumph of the Messiah, having failed of quo- 
tation in the Christian Scriptures, do not neces- 
sarily come within the scope of our present pur- 
pose. Two of these as specimens, viz, 72 and 
46, we have already considered, and others have 
been indicated, the Messianic character of all of 
which is uniformly conceded, both by rabbinical 
and Christian scholars. 

It should be remembered that though verses are 
quoted from some psalms, in the New Testament, 
as applicable to Christ, the entire psalms may not 
be Messianic ; indeed, other verses of the psalms, 
which contain confessions of human weakness and 
passion and sin, preclude any such supposition. 
The human and divine elements are woven to- 
gether in a single composition, both the local refer- 

199 



200 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

ence which is true to its human subject, and the 
prophetic reference which is true to the future 
Messiah, being apparent. Prophetic intimations 
are like pictures set in human framework, like bril- 
liant flashes of light out of surrounding clouds. 

A good illustration of this kind of Messianic 
literature is found in Psalm 69. There is no psalm, 
and indeed no portion of the Old Testament, that 
is more frequently quoted in the Christian Scrip- 
tures than this, with the exception of Psalms 22 
and 1 10. Not less than eight quotations from it, 
or references to it, are found in the Gospels of 
Matthew and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and 
the Epistle to the Romans, six of them pertaining 
to Christ, 1 one to the punishment of judas for his 
treachery toward his Master, 2 and one to the puni- 
tive rejection of the Jews for their rejection of the 
divinely appointed Messiah. 3 Yet in the midst of 
these quoted passages, or rather surrounding them, 
are verses which can by no possible means be re- 
ferred to Christ, and are utterly incongruous with 
his character. They are rather expressions of the 
spirit and character of the psalmist. Indeed, those 
passages which are referable to Christ, and rightly 
so, are sometimes such, quite as much by way of 
illustration and application as by distinct and spe- 
cific prediction. 

1 Matt. 27 : 27-30; 27 : 34; John 2 : 17 ; 15 : 25 ; Rom. 15 : 3. 
2 Acts I : 20. 3 Rom. 11:9, 10. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 201 

The following words from Prof. H. B. Hackett 
will make our meaning plain : 

A class of psalms reckoned as Messianic in a subordinate 
sense are those which describe general relations of truths, 
which contain prophecies or inspired declarations, which 
are verified as often as individuals are placed in particular 
circumstances, which lay within the view not necessarily of 
the writer, but of the Holy Spirit at whose dictation they 
were uttered. Thus the sixty-ninth Psalm is quoted in Acts 
i : 20 (see ver. 25) as if descriptive of the treatment which 
Christ should receive at the hands of his enemies, especially 
of Judas. The entire psalm cannot be strictly Messianic, 
for in ver. 5 the speaker says : " O God, thou knowest my 
foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee." The sub- 
ject of the psalm is rather the experience of the righteous 
in this world of treachery and wickedness on the one hand, 
and the conduct of the ungodly toward the righteous and 
their desert of punishment on the other. Hence when 
Peter quotes a passage of the psalm as spoken of Judas and 
fulfilled in him, we may understand him as declaring that 
the perfidy of Judas identified him fully with such persecu- 
tors of the righteous as the psalm contemplates, and hence 
that it was necessary that he should suffer the doom of those 
who sin in so aggravated a manner. The one hundred and 
ninth Psalm, and others, are susceptible of this mode of in- 
terpretation. 

Similar words are used by Perowne in his intro- 
duction to the sixty-ninth Psalm : 

It will be observed that many of these quotations are 
made generally by way of illustration and application, 
rather than as prophecies which have received fulfillment. 
Enough, however, remains to justify the Messianic sense of 



202 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

the psalm, provided our interpretation be fair and sober. 
. . . The history of prophets and holy men of old is a typi- 
cal history. They were, it may be said, representative 
men, suffering and hoping, not for themselves only, but for 
the nation whom they represented. In their sufferings they 
were feeble and transient images of the great sufferer who 
by his sufferings accomplished man' s redemption ; their 
hopes could never be fully realized but in the issue of his 
work, nor their aspirations be truly uttered save by his 
mouth. But confessions of sinfulness and imprecations of 
vengeance, mingling with these better hopes and aspira- 
tions, are a beacon to guide us in our interpretation. They 
teach us that the psalm is not a prediction ; that the 
psalmist does not put himself in the place of the Messiah 
to come. They show us that here, as indeed in all Scrip- 
tures, two streams, the human and the divine, flow on in 
the same channel. They seem to remind us that, if the 
prophets and minstrels of old were types of the great 
teacher of the church, yet they were so only in some re- 
spects, and not altogether. They bear witness to the im- 
perfection of those by whom God spake in time past unto 
the fathers, in many portions and in many ways, even whilst 
they point to him who is the living Word, the perfect reve- 
lation of the Father. 

The following remark of Dr. E. P. Barrows shows 
the method of interpretation resorted to by the 
Exclusive Messianists, and its unreasonableness. 

Those who apply these psalms exclusively to Christ as- 
sume that these confessions of sin are made in a vicarious 
way, the Messiah assuming the character of a sinner because 
"the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." 4 But 

4 Isa. 53 :6. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 203 

the form of these confessions forbids such an interpretation. 
When the psalmist says, ' ' Mine iniquities have taken hold 
upon me," "O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my 
sins are not hid from thee," we cannot understand such 
language of anything else than personal sinfulness. 

We are now prepared to examine the particular 
quotations from this psalm. In ver. 4 it reads : 
" They that hate me without a cause are more than 
the hairs of mine head." In John 15:25 Christ is 
represented as saying : " But this cometh to pass, 
that the word might be fulfilled that is written in 
their law, They hated me without a cause." The 
quotation is probably from the psalm, and presents 
our Lord as receiving in himself the full violence 
of the senseless and unreasonable hatred which 
God's servant of old had incurred to some extent. 
The psalmist was an imperfect type. In Christ 
was the illustration, and the culmination of what 
unjustifiable opposition and enmity could do against 
its object. His lot was in the fullest sense the lot 
of the righteous in a world of sin. Of him, as of 
no other being, could it be truthfully said, " They 
hated him without a cause." 

Geikie paraphrases Christ's words as follows : 
"Yet this hatred of me by the unbelieving world 
is not a mere accident or chance, but was foreseen 
by God and spoken of in ancient prophecy, as you 
read, 'They hated me without a cause.'" 

In ver. 9 it is written : "For the zeal of thine 



204 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

house hath eaten me up ; and the reproaches of them 
that reproached thee are fallen upon me." In the 
second chapter of John's Gospel, after Christ's 
severe denunciation of the money changers in the 
temple, and his expulsion of them from the sacred 
edifice, it is added by the evangelist : " His dis- 
ciples remembered that it was written, ' Zeal for thy 
house shall eat me up.' " The future tense is the 
authorized reading, and John evidently uses the 
future to show that he considers the psalm Messi- 
anic, and that the remarkable conduct of Christ is 
a proof that he is the Messiah, and that the pre- 
diction is fulfilled in him. Prof. C. H. Toy says : 

The psalm passage was remembered and quoted by the 
disciples when they saw their Master, heedless of the con- 
sequences to himself, engaged in driving away the polluters 
of the temple enclosure. The psalm was regarded as Mes- 
sianic, and this occurrence in the life of Jesus as the fulfill- 
ment of a prediction. Hence the evangelist felt himself 
warranted in writing " shall eat me up." 

It may be replied that John took no unwarranted 
liberties with the text. Prophecy was often ex- 
pressed in Hebrew by the perfect tense, as if the 
events had already taken place. See the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah. The remainder of the verse is 
quoted in Rom. 15 : 3 as especially applicable to 
the Saviour, "For even Christ pleased not himself; 
but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that re- 
proached thee fell on me." 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 205 

In ver. 12, "They that sit in the gate speak 
against me ; and I was the song of the drunkards" 
is believed to be a foreshadowing of the mocking 
treatment of Christ by the drunken Roman soldiers 
in the pretorium, as recorded in Matt. 27 : 27-30. 

In ver. 20 and 21 we read: "Reproach hath 
broken my lie art ; and I am full of heaviness : and 
I looked for some to take pity, but there was none ; 
and for comforters, but I found none. They gave 
me also gall for my meat ; and in my thirst they gave 
me vinegar to drink." This language seems little 
less than an accurate and sympathetic description 
of the crucifixion of our Saviour, and the scenes 
connected with it, his breaking heart — which many 
believe to be a physical fact — his crushing grief and 
loneliness, his desertion even by his disciples, his 
mute and vain appeal for pity and comfort, all of 
which, we are told, took place " that the Scriptures 
of the prophets might be fulfilled," l and the literal 
presentation of vinegar and gall to his thirsty lips. 2 
This seems like a bit of narrative taken from one 
of the Gospels. Had the psalmist been present as 
an eye-witness, his account might have been fuller, 
but it could not have been more accurate. No 
one can read these words without the conviction 
that, however true they may have been to the ex- 
perience of the psalmist, they found a remarkably 

1 Matt. 26 : 56. 2 Matt. 27 : 30-34. 



206 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

literal fulfillment in the experience of the Son of 
God. 

Reference has already been made to the fact 
that the language of ver. 22 and 23 is quoted by 
the Apostle Paul, 1 as finding its fulfillment in the 
judicial blindness and rejection of the Jews because 
of their repudiation of their own Messiah, and also 
to the fact that the Apostle Peter cites with some 
freedom verse twenty-five as foretelling the doom 
of Judas Iscariot. All these citations abundantly 
establish the Messianic character of the psalm, al- 
though, as has been said, the distinctly human ele- 
ment is a prominent feature of it. 

The seventy-eighth Psalm has two verses which 
are quoted in the New Testament, viz, the second 
and the twenty-fourth. The second verse reads : 
" / ' zvill open my mouth ill a parable: I will utter 
dark sayings of old" or, I will disclose the secret 
lessons of the past. The psalmist declares his pur- 
pose to impart important instruction from the les- 
sons of the history of God's people, the term 
"parable" being used, as has been said, "with 
large latitude in the Old Testament," as covering 
illustrations, sententious remarks, and any form of 
didactic, poetic literature. The Evangelist Matthew, 
having recorded several of Christ's instructive par- 
ables, finds in the great Teacher and in his method 

1 Rom. II : 9, 10 ; see also 2 Cor. 3 : 14. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 207 

of imparting truth, a beautiful illustration and ful- 
fillment of the psalmist's words. In 13 : 34, 35 he 
says : " All these things spake Jesus unto the mul- 
titude in parables ; and without a parable spake he 
not unto them : that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my 
mouth in parables ; I will utter things which have 
been kept secret from the foundation of the world." 
This quotation is from the Septuagint, and is quite 
free, though it does not depart from the meaning 
of the original. The words of the psalm announce 
the method of instruction which God, who was 
speaking in them by his Spirit, employed in teach- 
ing the people. The writer of the Gospel, as he 
sees Christ's method of presenting truth, is not 
only reminded of the psalmist's statement, but evi- 
dently confesses his belief that the statement was 
prophetic, and was being fulfilled in Christ and his 
method of teaching. Doctor Broadus says of the 
phrase, "that it might be fulfilled" : 

This expression requires us to understand a real fulfill- 
ment of a real prediction — unless that idea could be shown 
to be in the given case impossible — and a fulfillment de- 
signedly brought about in the course of providence. . . 
The evangelist states it as a part of the divine purpose, in 
our Lord's adoption of the parabolic method of instruc- 
tion, that there should be a fulfillment of that prophetic 
saying. Unless we can show that there was no such pro- 
phetic relation, we must certainly accept the evangelist's 
statement. 



208 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Another view of the quotation is given by Pe- 
rowne who says : 

How are we to understand the quotation made by St. 
Matthew of this passage, who sees a fulfillment of it in the 
parables spoken by our Lord ? It cannot be supposed for a 
moment that these words were a prediction of our Lord's 
mode of teaching, or that he himself is here the speaker. 
But here, as elsewhere, that which the Old Testament prophet 
says of himself, finds its fittest expression, its highest re- 
alization, in the great Prophet of the kingdom of heaven. 

This view does not seem to meet the full de- 
mands of the language of the evangelist, which 
evidently refers to a divine purpose expressed in 
the words of the psalm, which found a fulfillment 
in the teaching of Christ. 

In ver. 24 we read, "And had rained dowii man- 
na upon them to eat, and had given of the corn of 
heaven." The Jews, when Christ was pressing up- 
on them his claims upon their faith in his divine 
character and mission, cited the language of the 
psalm, or the substance of it, and demanded of 
Christ some similar sign and divine credential. 
" They said therefore unto him, What sign showest 
thou then, that we may see, and believe thee ? 
what dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna 
in the desert ; as it is written, He gave them bread 
from heaven to eat." J It was the Jews who cited 
these words from their own Scriptures. 

1 John 6 : 30, 31. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 200, 

Dr. Hovey says on this passage : 

The mention of food that does not perish, but endureth 
unto eternal life, reminds them of the manna that was 
given to their fathers, when under the leadership of Moses, 
and they at once intimate the propriety of a similar bless- 
ing from Jesus. If he will give them, by miracle, not bar- 
ley bread and fishes only, but the food of angels, they may 
receive him as the Messiah, greater than Moses. 

Christ replied deliberately, "Verily, verily, I say 
unto you," claiming that the manna though super- 
natural in its origin, was plainly a type of himself, 
who was the genuine bread of God, who both 
came down from heaven and was to give life to the 
hungry world, and not simply to the starving Is- 
raelites. " It was not Moses that gave you the 
bread out of heaven," but God. That bread, how- 
ever, was limited in amount, and circumscribed in 
its distribution, and perishable in its nature, and 
food only for the body. It was hardly worthy to 
be called the bread of heaven. It was only a 
type of what was to come, only the material 
shadow of the spiritual substance. " But my 
Father giveth you the true bread out of heaven. 
For the bread of God is that which cometh down 
out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world." 
The Jews saw only the local miracle and the glory 
of their great prophet Christ saw the prophetic 
type of himself, heavenly in origin, life-giving in 
its properties, and adequate for a famishing world. 



2IO THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Geikie has the following instructive paragraph 
on the manna of the wilderness as a type of Christ : 

The miracle of the manna had become a subject of the 
proudest remembrances and fondest legends of the nation. 
"God," says the Talmud, "made manna to descend for 
them, in which were all manner of tastes. Every Israelite 
found in it what best pleased him. The young tasted 
bread, the old honey, and the children oil." It had 
become a fixed belief that the Messiah, when he came, 
would signalize his advent by a repetition of this stupen- 
dous miracle. . . It was thus only an expression of the 
public feeling of the day, when Jesus was asked to repeat 
the descent of manna — the greatest of the miracles of 
Moses. . . But Jesus, at all times resolute in withholding 
miraculous action for any personal end, had not thought of 
satisfying their craving for wonders. "Moses, indeed," 
said he, ' ' gave you manna, but it was not the true Bread 
of Heaven." He wished to draw them from the merely 
outward miracle to that far higher wonder even then 
enacting before their eyes, the free offer of the true Bread 
of heaven, in the offer of himself as their Saviour. 

In Psalm 89 we find promises so far-reaching 
and grand, that it is impossible to restrict them to 
King David or Solomon his son. They can only 
be fulfilled in the character and dominion of great 
David's greater son and successor, the spiritual 
King of the spiritual Israel, the divine Messiah. 
They are substantially the same promises that were 
given to David and his seed in the second book of 
Samuel, and as those promises look forward to the 
universal establishment and glory of the kingdom 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 211 

of Christ for their perfect fulfillment, so must these. 
The language of these promises in history and 
psalm is so similar, and so closely resembles the 
language of other prophecies in the Old Testa- 
ment, that it is difficult to tell exactly from which 
of them the New Testament writers quote. 

The psalm opens with these impressive words : 
" 1 will sing of the mercies of tJie Lord for ever : 
with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness 
to all generations. For I have said, Mercy shall be 
built up for ever : thy faithfulness shalt thou establish 
in the very heavens. I have made a covenant with 
my chosen, I have sworn unto David, my servant, 
Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy 
throne to all generations.'" These words are suffi- 
cient to prove the Messianic import of the psalm. 
David was God's chosen one. It was his seed, i. e. y 
Christ, that was to be established forever, and his 
throne that was to be built up through all gener- 
ations. We are reminded of the Apostle Paul's 
language, 1 " Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our 
Lord, which was made of the seed of David accord- 
ing to the flesh," and of the angel's annunciation to 
the Virgin Mary : " And the Lord God shall give 
unto him the throne of his father David, and he 
shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and 
of his kingdom there shall be no end." 

1 Rom. I : 3. 



212 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Later in this psalm we find such expressions as 
these : " Then thou spake st in vision to thy Holy 
One, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is 
mighty ; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. 
I have found David, my servant ; with my holy oil 
have I anointed him : with whom my hand shall be 
established: mine arm also shall strengthen him. . . 
And in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will 
set his hand also in the sea, and, his right ha?td in 
the rivers [showing the unlimited extent of his pos- 
sessions]. He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, 
my God, and the Rock of my salvation. Also I 
will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings 
of the earth. . . His seed also will I make to endure 
for ever, and his throne as tlie days of heaven" 
This language is thoroughly pervaded with the 
Christ-thought It is shot through and through 
with the Messianic idea. 

The quotations may be more of sentiment than 
of language, but the language is not wholly want- 
ing in the Christian Scriptures. The psalm says, 
" I have laid help on one that is mighty." The 
Epistle says, " He is able to save to the uttermost 
all that come unto him." The psalm says, "With 
my holy oil have I anointed him." The Gospel 
says, " We have found the Messiah, which is, being 
interpreted, the Anointed." The psalm says, " In 
my name shall his horn be exalted." The Gospel 
says, " And hath raised up a horn of salvation for 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 213 

us in the house of his servant David." This psalm 
says, " I will set his hand also in the sea, and his 
right hand in the rivers." Another psalm says of 
the Messiah, " He shall have dominion also from 
sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the 
earth." The psalm says, " He shall cry unto me, 
Thou art my Father, my God." The Gospel says, 
" I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to 
my God and to your God." The psalm says, " I 
will make him my firstborn." One Epistle says, 
" That he might be the firstborn among many 
brethren," and again another Epistle says, "Who 
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of 
every creature." The psalm says, " I will make 
him higher than the kings of the earth." The 
Gospel says, " He shall be great, and shall be called 
the Son of the Highest," and the Epistle says, 
"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and 
given him a name that is above every name, that 
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of 
things in heaven, and things in the earth, and 
things under the earth, and that every tongue 
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the 
glory of God the Father." The psalm says, "His 
seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his 
throne as the days of heaven." The Revelation 
says, " The kingdoms of this world are become 
the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and 
he shall reign for ever and ever." 



214 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Since David and Solomon are both acknowledged 
to be types of Christ, and in view of the extrava- 
gance of such language when applied to them, and 
the resemblance of thought and language when 
applied to Christ, the Messianic character of the 
psalm is clearly apparent. 

In Ps. 96 : 13 it is declared, "He shall judge 
the world with righteousness." The same language 
is used in Ps. 98 : 9. Both of these psalms point 
forward to the universal and blessed reign of Christ, 
a distinguishing feature of which will be that all 
judgment will be administered in absolute equity. 
This will exalt the Messianic dispensation, when its 
fullness shall have been brought in, above all 
human administration of authority and justice. 
Now, everywhere in the New Testament Christ is 
held up in his judicial character and office. He 
himself said, 1 " For the Father judgeth no man, 
but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." 
And in harmony with this claim of Christ, the 
Apostle Paul, in his famous discourse on Mars Hill, 
in that city of Grecian culture and grossest idola- 
try, used the very language of the psalm, and 
determined its Messianic application, when he said : 
" Because he hath appointed a day, in the which 
he will judge the world in righteousness by that 
man whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath 

1 John 5 : 22. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 21 5 

given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised 
him from the dead." 

In Ps. 97 : 7 is found the following sentence : 
" Worship him, all ye gods" This is a dramatic 
appeal evidently to all heathen idols to bow down 
and worship at the. feet of Jehovah, or as this psalm 
is obviously Messianic in its anticipative expres- 
sions, at the feet of Messiah. The Septuagint ver- 
sion renders this sentence, " Worship him, all ye 
his angels." Some interpreters have supposed that 
this was the original of Heb. I : 6 : ''And again, 
when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the 
world, he saith, And let all the angels of God wor- 
ship him." But the weight of authority is in favor 
of finding the original in the Septuagint rendering 
of Deut. 32 : 43, so that the passage does not come 
under our consideration. 

In Ps. 102 there is a sublime declaration of the 
eternity and immutability of God (ver. 25-27) : " Of 
old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth : and 
the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall 
perish, but thou shalt endure : yea, all of them shall 
wax old like a garment ; as a vesture shalt thou 
change them, and they shall be changed : But thou 
art the same, and thy years shall have no end." 
These words are quoted in Heb. 1 : 10-12, as di- 
rectly applicable to Christ. The writer of the 
Epistle is proving the infinite superiority of Christ 
to angelic beings, and his oneness with God. He 



2l6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

calls him "the brightness of God's glory, and the 
express image of his person." He ascribes to him 
creative power, and the almighty sustaining energy 
by which all things are upheld. Having ascribed 
to him these attributes of Deity, he completes the 
expression of his faith in the full divinity of Christ 
by declaring his eternal sovereignty and the un- 
changeableness of his Being : "Thy throne, O God, 
is for ever and ever," "Thou art the same, and thy 
years shall not fail." He quotes in the process of 
his argument in this chapter from no less than six 
psalms, with the fullest confidence in their Messianic 
import and in the validity of his reasoning, and in 
its force in the minds of those to whom he wrote. 
Of this quotation Kuenen says : " It is difficult to 
say what has led the writer to this interpretation." 
Not at all. The writer having connected Christ 
with the whole universe of worlds as their almighty 
Creator and Upholder, it was the most natural 
thing in the world for him to contrast now their 
perishableness and transient nature with the eter- 
nity and immutability of him who made them all.. 
He chose his quotation from a psalm that is in 
other parts obviously Messianic, and to him there 
was no distinction between the Messiah of the New 
Testament and Jehovah of the Old, so that lan- 
guage originally spoken of Jehovah was equally ap- 
plicable to Christ. He accepted Christ's own words 
as to his nature, " I and my Father are one." 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 217 

Dr. Franklin Johnson has well said : 

A glance at the psalm itself will show why it is thus ap- 
plied, for it is distinctively Messianic in those parts which 
refer to the future action of God in saving men. . . The 
psalm was probably written during the Babylonian captiv- 
ity, or soon after it, and the predictions of future deliver- 
ance refer primarily to the return of the nation from exile, 
or the escape from the distress immediately succeeding it. 
But the view of the prophet sweeps far beyond this period, 
and his expressions depict a future more glorious than the 
restoration of the tribes to their own land, or than the high- 
est prosperity which they attained afterward. "The na- 
tions," the Gentiles, are to " fear the name of Jehovah, and 
the kings of the earth his glory." "The peoples," the 
Gentiles again, are to "be gathered together, and the king- 
doms to serve Jehovah." Even after the heavens and the 
earth have passed away, the children of God ' ' shall con- 
tinue, and their seed shall be established." The psalm, 
thus, is typical, looking to the return of national prosperity, 
and making this the foreshadowing of the kingdom of the 
Messiah, in its universal extent and its eternal duration, 
Jehovah should accomplish all this, the Jehovah who laid 
the foundations of the earth, who formed the heavens with 
his hands, who shall remove all these his works, and who 
shall endure forever after they are destroyed. The psalmist 
looked forward to what Jehovah would do, the writer to the 
Hebrews to what he had done ; the one beheld Jehovah, the 
other Christ ; they are therefore essentially one and the 
same Being, according to the uniform teaching of the New 
Testament. 

In Ps. 1 1 8 : 22, 23 is found a statement which is 
familiar to all readers of the New Testament : " The 
stone which the builders refused is become the head 



21 8 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing ; it is 
marvelous in our eyes." The occasion of this psalm 
has been variously understood, Ewald, Hengsten- 
berg, Delitzsch, and Stier each suggesting a differ- 
ent one. It was undoubtedly written for some 
great festival, and in commemoration of some great 
event. It was one of the series of psalms sung at 
the Passover. It recounts the restoration of God's 
people after a period of humiliation and apparent 
rejection. The allusion to the rejected stone, and 
its recovery and exaltation to the place of honor, 
may have been a proverb. If the psalm was writ- 
ten after the exile, and found its occasion in the 
building of the second temple, the proverb found 
an application in the rehabilitation of the Jews by 
the favor of God after they had been despised by 
the nations. Cheyne says : " An old proverb in a 
new light. The stone means Israel, which contrary 
to all human probability had again become promi- 
nent in the complex organization of peoples. The 
builders are non-Israelites, who would fain have 
arranged the world to their liking." He makes no 
reference to Christ's use of the proverb, and sees in 
it no Messianic application. 

The psalm to the Jews had its Messianic features, 
as we shall soon see, and Christ found in this prov- 
erb a reference and application to himself. 1 He 

1 Matt. 21 : 42 ; Mark 12 : 10, 11 ; Luke 20 : 17. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 219 

turned it against the Jewish nation of his day, as a 
prophetic intimation of their treatment of him, and 
in spite of that, of his exaltation to be a Prince and 
a Saviour, the corner-stone of God's spiritual tem- 
ple, of the true Israel who should be saved. Peter 
in his brave defense before the hostile authorities 
of Jerusalem, being " filled with the Holy Ghost," 
it is said ; 2 and again in his First Epistle, 3 under 
the inspiration of the same divine Spirit, makes use 
of the Saviour's interpretation and personal appli- 
cation of the psalmist's words, and distinctly asserts 
that they were a prophecy of the coming Messiah, 
of the treatment which he should receive at the 
hands of the Jews, and of his full endorsement by 
God and enthronement as the world's only Re- 
deemer. The Jews might reject him and repudiate 
his Messianic claims ; indeed, it was preannounced 
that they would do so ; but notwithstanding, there 
was " none other name under heaven given among 
men whereby we must be saved." The stone 
might be disallowed by those who professed to be 
the builders of true religion in the world ; but nev- 
ertheless it was the "elect" stone of God, laid in Zion 
by his own hand, and "precious " alike to him and 
to all who through faith should build upon it. 

Geikie unfolds the significance of the proverb 
and its application as follows : 

1 Acts 4 : II. 2 2 : 6, 7. 



220 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

The meaning was clear. The corner-stone of the king- 
dom of God, of which those in his presence claimed to be 
the chief men, was, in their own mode of speech, only a 
figurative name for the Messiah, on whom its existence and 
completion depended, as a building depends on its founda- 
tion and support. The psalm quoted had been sung, it is 
believed, by Israel on the first feast of Tabernacles after 
the return from captivity. Its historical reference was 
primarily to the Jewish nation — rejected by the heathen, 
but chosen again by God as the foundation of his earthly 
kingdom ; but in a higher spiritual sense, the rabbis them- 
selves understood it of the Messiah, and thus there could 
be no doubt in the mind of any Jew, that when now ap- 
plied by Christ to himself, it was a direct claim of Messianic 
dignity. 

Christ adds, in order to emphasize the serious 
consequences of unbelief and rejection of him, of 
which some men seem to think so little, "Whoso- 
ever shall fall on this stone shall be broken : but 
on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to 
powder." Reference may have been had to the 
language of Isa. 8 : 14, which is certainly quoted 
by Peter in the same connection, 1 where he calls it 
"a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence." The 
corner-stone which has been cast aside, may be in 
the way, and men may stumble over it to their serious 
injury, or in casting it aside men may pull it over 
upon themselves, and it fall upon them with crush- 
ing weight. In either case the result is disastrous. 

Doctor Broadus says upon this passage : 

1 1 Peter 2 : 8. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 221 

He who in unbelief finds this stone an obstacle, smites 
against it and falls, will not only be bruised by the fall, 
but broken in pieces. If he stumbles over Jesus as unfit 
to be a Saviour, all his religious hopes will be utterly 
destroyed. In the second clause the image is some- 
what changed. The stone is here conceived not as a 
foundation stone, but as placed higher up in the corner, 
perhaps at the top, and some one tries to pull it down from 
its place ; but it falls upon him, and scatters him like a 
puff of dust. [There is no necessity of suggesting the 
slightest change of the figure. Men are not infrequently 
crushed in handling a foundation stone.] Jesus came to be 
the Messiah ; the Jews reject him, and thereby utterly lose 
the Messianic felicity. He is notwithstanding placed by 
God as the corner-stone of salvation ; the Jews try to pull 
him down, to defeat the divine plan by putting him to 
death, but in falling he will scatter like chaff their schemes 
and themselves. They will have not only the loss which 
comes from stumbling at him, but the terrible destruction 
which comes from pulling him down on their heads ; while 
he, divinely replaced, will forever remain the corner-stone 
of human salvation. 

Such is the Messianic interpretation of the pas- 
sage in the psalm as given by the Messiah him- 
self and his apostles, and such is the solemn warn- 
ing, to Gentiles as well as Jews, against the willful 
rejection of Jesus Christ. 

In ver. 26 of this psalm we read, "Blessed be he 
that cometh i?i the name of the Lord." These words 
are quoted with slightly varying additions by each 
of the four evangelists. 1 They appear in the ac- 

1 Matt. 21 : 9 ; Mark II : 9 ; Luke 19 : 38 ; John 12 : 13. 



222 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

counts of the public entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 
the Sunday before his crucifixion. It was the one 
occasion in his earthly life when our Lord received 
something of the recognition and honor which 
belonged to him. He whose weary feet had 
often traversed in all humility the rough roads of 
Judea, now for once came riding with some little 
appearance of state and dignity, in fulfillment of 
a distinct prophetic utterance. 1 The multitude 
moved by some mysterious impulse, crowded upon 
him, and followed after in lengthening procession. 
Their hearts were stirred to unwonted enthusiasm. 
They tore the branches from the trees and scat- 
tered them in the way. They carpeted the road 
with the clothing hastily stripped from their 
shoulders. The thought swelled within them that 
the national hope was about to be realized, that the 
faith which had been kept alive for centuries had 
come to its fulfillment and blessed reward. They 
could no longer repress their emotions. They 
filled the air with their shouts and acclamations of 
praise. One voice expressed the thought, and all 
tongues were unloosed, and from end to end of 
the procession the cry went up, " Hosanna to the 
Son of David ! Blessed is he that cometh in the 
name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the highest!" 
Edersheim, in "The Life and Times of Jesus the 

1 Matt. 21 : 4, 5 and Zech. 9 : 9. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 223 

Messiah," has given a very graphic description of 
this incident. He says : 

We can imagine it all, how the fire would leap from heart 
to heart. So he was the promised Son of David — and the 
kingdom was at hand ! It may have been just as the pre- 
cise point of the road was reached when "the city of Da- 
vid ' ' first suddenly emerges into view, « « at the descent of 
the mount of Olives," "that the whole multitude of the 
disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice 
for all the mighty works that they had seen." As the 
burning words of joy and praise, the record of what they 
had seen, passed from mouth to mouth, and they caught 
their first sight of "the city of David," adorned as a bride 
to welcome her King, Davidic praise to David's Greater 
Son wakened the echoes of old Davidic psalms in the morn- 
ing light of their fulfillment. 

It was a thrilling and significant scene in the 
life of Christ, and must have produced a profound 
impression upon the multitude, and upon Christ 
himself, who saw as the multitude did not, but as 
we now know, that his death was only five days 
distant, that his triumphal ride was toward his cru- 
cifixion and shame. The scene has been pictured 
for us in the immortal lines of Milman's impressive 
hymn : 

Ride on ! ride on in majesty ! 

Hark ! all the tribes Hosanna cry ! 

Thine humble beast pursues his road, 

With palms and scattered garments strewed. 

Ride on ! ride on in majesty ! 
In lowly pomp ride on to die ! 



224 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

O Christ, thy triumphs now begin 
O' er captive death and conquered sin. 

Ride on ! ride on in majesty ! 
The winged squadrons of the sky 
Look down with sad and wondering eyes 
To see the approaching sacrifice. 

Ride on ! ride on in majesty ! 
The last and fiercest strife is nigh ; 
The Father on his sapphire throne 
Expects his own anointed Son. 

Ride on ! ride on in majesty ! 
In lowly pomp ride on to die ! 
Bow thy meek head to mortal pain ! 
Then take, O God, thy power and reign. 

But what gave to the scene its peculiar signifi- 
cance? It was the words that burst from the lips 
of the multitude, the quotation from their familiar 
psalm, which had always been applied to their 
coming King Messiah. They had found the living 
application for which they had impatiently waited. 
The divine prophecy had come to its fulfillment. 
It was an open acknowledgment of the Messianic 
character of Jesus. He was David's promised Son 
and Lord, in whom the expectations of the nation 
were centered, clothed with divine authority to bring 
in his glorious reign, and as they believed, to re- 
establish his throne forever. The word "hosanna" 
meant originally, "Save, we beseech thee," and 
was a contraction of the previous verse of the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 22 5 

psalm (ver. 25). To the Jews who uttered these 
words, and to the Jews who heard them, there 
could have been but one meaning, viz, an acknowl- 
edgment of the prophetic character of the words 
of the psalm, and a distinct recognition of their 
reference to the lowly man riding before them. 

Godet interprets this remarkable scene in the 
following words : 

The cries of the multitude leave no doubt as to the mean- 
ing of this demonstration ; it was, indeed, the Messiah 
whom the people welcomed and saluted in the person of 
Jesus. The acclamations reported by St. John 12 : 13, 
and for which equivalents are given by the synoptists, are 
taken from Psalm 118, especially ver. 25, 26. Numerous 
rabbinic quotations prove this psalm to have been regarded 
as Messianic. Every Israelite knew these words by heart ; 
they were sung at the feast of Tabernacles, in the proces- 
sion made round the altar, and at the Passover, after the 
singing of the great Hallel, Ps. 11 3-1 18, at the close of 
the repast. Hosanna {save, I beseech thee) is a prayer ad- 
dressed to God by the theocratic people on behalf of its 
King Messiah ; it is, if we may venture so to speak, the 
Israelite God save the King. 

Ellicott in his discussion of this incident says in 
conclusion : 

Such was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem ; such the 
most striking event, considered with reference to the na- 
tion, on which we have as yet meditated. It was no less 
than a public recognition of Jesus of Nazareth as the long- 
looked-for Messiah, the long and passionately expected 
theocratic King. 

P 



226 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

This accounts for the indignation of the Pharisees 
who stood by. To them the use of those sacred 
words by the disciples, and their application to 
Jesus was nothing less than blasphemy, as they 
thought the Master himself would acknowledge, 
and so they said, " Master, rebuke thy disciples." 
But Jesus, instead of repudiating the interpretation 
and conduct of the disciples, approved and ac- 
cepted it in the most emphatic and unmistakable 
manner, saying unto those blind objectors, " I tell 
you that, if these should hold their peace," if they 
should fail to see in me your foretold Messiah, and 
the fulfillment of these words which they have 
spoken, even inanimate nature would arouse itself 
to testify in my behalf, "the stones would imme- 
diately cry out," as if in forced and intelligent ac- 
knowledgment of my divine character and claims. 

Neander, recognizing the unmistakable signifi- 
cance and full force of this Messianic welcome to 
Christ, and the nature of the rebuke administered 
to those who would have forbidden it, says : 

An event had occurred, so lofty and so pregnant with the 
best interests of mankind, that it might rouse even the dull- 
est to rejoice. In the mouth of any other, even the great- 
est of men, these words (as to the spontaneous testimony of 
the stones) would have been an unjustifiable self-exaltation ; 
uttered by him, they show the weighty import which he 
gave to his manifestation. Christ's conduct in this respect, 
moreover, shows that such an entry into Jerusalem formed 
part of his plan. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 227 

A little later, probably the next day, according 
to Matthew's record, 1 Christ appeared in the tem- 
ple, and gave fresh proof of his Messiahship by 
casting out the profane traffickers, and vindicating 
the honor of his Father's house, and performing 
anew his mighty miracles. Again, the children 
took up the Messianic greeting, and again the 
anger of the priests and scribes was kindled against 
him, and they cried out indignantly, " Hearest 
thou what these say? " And again Christ accepted 
the ascription of Messianic honor as rightfully be- 
longing to him, and claimed the fulfillment of an- 
other prophetic utterance, contained in their Holy 
Scriptures, 2 in which the simple minds of children 
are made to recognize his divine glory, and their 
lisping tongues to proclaim his praise, to the shame 
of the blind prejudice and proud godlessness of 
his rejecters. On this fresh outburst of praise on 
the one hand, and enmity on the other, Geikie re- 
marks : 

His bold appearance in the temple itself especially filled 
the priestly dignitaries and rabbis with indignation, all the 
deeper because they dared not arrest him for fear of the 
crowds, even when now in their very hand. That the 
children should hail him as the Messiah, also enraged 
them. "Hearest thou not what these say?" asked some 
of them. But instead of disavowing the supreme honor 
ascribed to him, he only replied that he did. "But," 

1 Matt. 21 : 12-16. 2 Ps. 8 : 2. 



228 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

added he, ' ' have ye never read in your Scriptures, Out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings thou (Jehovah) hast per- 
fected praise, that thou mightest put to shame thine ene- 
mies, and silence thy foes, and those who rage against 
thee ? ' ' 

Subsequently in Christ's severe arraignment of 
Jerusalem and heart-broken lament over its doom, 
he repeated the application of this psalm-prophecy 
to himself, saying: 1 "For I say unto you, ye shall 
not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is 
he that cometh in the name of the Lord," ac- 
knowledging me to be the Messiah, as my disciples 
and the children of Jerusalem have already done. 
After his resurrection they saw him no more ; and 
the veil is still upon their faces, and upon the faces 
of all persons of our time throughout the Christian 
world, who see not him upon whom the abundant 
light of Old Testament prophecy, shining from so 
many books, converges in convincing splendor, and 
who do not reverently, believingly, rejoicingly join 
in the old acclamation : " Hosanna to the son of 
David and the Son of God. Blessed is he that 
cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the 
highest !" 

1 Matt. 23 : 39. 



CHAPTER X 
CONCLUSION 



X 



We have now passed in review the 
Conclusion psalms which are denominated Mes- 
sianic, having examined particularly those entire 
psalms which are quoted at length in the New 
Testament as referring to Christ, whatever local ap- 
plication they may have had, having analyzed other 
specimen psalms which, though not quoted by New 
Testament writers, are nevertheless pervaded with 
the Messianic spirit and rich with the Messianic 
hope ; and having critically studied all of those 
separate verses within the limits of the sacred He- 
brew Psalter, which the Christian Scriptures have 
declared to be prophetic utterances of the coming, 
the character, and the mission of the Son of God. 
All these numerous passages have set before us 
with the utmost clearness, and sometimes with re- 
markable minuteness, the person, the divine char- 
acter, the human descent, the humiliation and 
sufferings, the exaltation and glory, the priestly 
service and the royal dignity, of the Messiah, and 
also the world-wide triumph and blessedness of his 
kingdom. There is hardly a feature of the New 
Testament picture of Christ as Prophet, Priest, and 
Divine King, and of his redemptive work for the 

231 



232 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

human race, which was not pre-announced in this 
book of religious hymns. A systematic treatise 
might almost be compiled from these sublime songs. 

Yet it should be remembered that these sacred 
songs contain but a small part of the Messianic 
prophecies. They abound also in other portions of 
the Old Testament, and are equally clear in their 
import, and are in like manner quoted by Christ 
and the writers of the New Testament as applicable 
to our Lord. In the aggregate they number not 
less than three hundred. 

If it be said that it was the Messianic idea which 
prevailed in the time of Christ that determined this 
Messianic interpretation of the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures, it may be replied that the Messianic idea 
was as old as the Hebrew race, that it prevailed 
when the Jewish Scriptures were written, all along 
the centuries of their composition, having been 
created, if we may accept the statements of the 
Scriptures, by the Holy Spirit of God, and having 
been kept alive and powerful by the inspired 
Scriptures of their faith. So that instead of its 
being a new and later idea interpreting itself into 
the old records, it was the old records that gave 
reality and vividness and an indestructible vitality 
to the Messianic idea. 

Rev. Stanley Leathes, speaking of the early origin 
and permanence of the Messianic idea among the 
Jewish nation, says : 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 233 

It may, however, be asserted that this characteristic of 
the Jewish literature is not the cause but the effect of the 
inborn consciousness of the nation. And we readily grant 
it. The literature itself implies no less, being, as it is, in a 
great degree a record of the manner in which that conscious- 
ness arose. . . What I am anxious to maintain, however, is 
just this, that for my argument it matters not whether the 
writings cherished the consciousness or the consciousness 
produced the writings, the fact remains substantially the 
same, that in these writings there is to be discovered, upon 
the testimony of the nation who preserved them, and upon 
the authority of our Lord and his apostles, a mass of recorded 
history, teaching, and prophecy, which has direct reference 
to a Messiah. 

Much has been written, and truthfully, with ref- 
erence to the hopes and longings which pervaded 
the ancient world, "the prophetic utterances, an- 
nouncing better times and a coming deliverance." 
There was a providential preparation of the nations 
for Christ, the Messiah, outside of the Jewish nation. 
These " prophetic utterances " of the heathen world 
lack the clearness, the positiveness, the divine au- 
thentication, and the multiplicity of those contained 
in the Hebrew Scriptures ; but they cannot be ig- 
nored in estimating the reality and the value of the 
Jewish predictions. Among the Chinese, the In- 
dians, and the Persians they were not wanting. 
They take on a remarkable definiteness and per- 
sonality among the Greeks and the Romans. 
Plato's remarkable connection of the coming re- 
demption with a suffering righteous man is well 



234 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

known, and also the significant prophecy which has 
made the fourth eclogue of Virgil famous. But in 
the words of Luthardt : "It was not only by the 
words of individuals that such yearnings were ex- 
pressed. A tone of prophecy, a feature of yearn- 
ing, a presentiment of truth, pervades all heathen- 
ism." Giving due weight to this expectant condi- 
tion of the world, the same author ascribes to the 
Jewish nation a peculiar pre-eminence, as a people 
chosen by God to receive and make known his pur- 
pose of redemption for mankind, and its method 
through a personal Messiah : 

Israel was the nation of hope. Ancient prophecies of a 
redemption and a Redeemer to come, existed among this 
people, and ever kept their view directed to the future. 
From the remotest ages men had been acquainted with a 
prophetic promise proceeding from the mouth of God — 
the prophecy of the woman' s seed, which was to bruise 
the serpent's head. The final victory of man over the 
power of evil upon earth, through a son of man, was 
promised by this saying, which pointed to the obscure 
future. All subsequent prophecies were in substance but 
further developments of this primitive one. . . These as- 
sumed a form ever-increasingly definite, while their fulfill- 
ment was confined to an ever-narrowing circle — to the seed 
of Abraham, the tribe of Judah, the house of David. The 
Blessing of the nations, the warlike Hero, the King whose 
dominion was to be victorious and peaceable, is their sub- 
ject. . . This future was to be introduced by a new and 
great revelation of Jehovah, the bearer of which was as the 
end of preceding history, to close up prophecy in himself, 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 235 

and possess the fullness of the Spirit of God, to be the true 
High Priest, and the true and final King, who was also to 
attain to glory through sufferings, and to bring upon all the 
nations of the earth the happy, glorious, and peaceful gov- 
ernment of God. This is the one great theme of all the 
prophecies. 

A hope that had been kindled by God, according 
to their accepted tradition, at the very beginning 
of human history, when God said, 1 "The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head," though often 
disappointed, and sometimes undoubtedly assuming 
a false shape, as it did in the minds of many at the 
time of Christ's advent, had been constantly fostered 
by the Spirit of God through many centuries, had 
survived exile and bondage and weary wanderings, 
to say nothing of spiritual degeneracy and empty 
formalism, and had found expression in all their 
sacred literature, until at last in the fullness of time 
there were devout men, like aged Simeon, to whom, 
it is significantly said, " it was revealed by the Holy 
Ghost that he should not see death until he had 
seen the Lord's Christ," who took the living divine 
Fulfillment in his arms and cried with supreme and 
blessed satisfaction, " Lord, now lettest thou thy 
servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for 
mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 

To the objection that the Messianic hope was of 
late origin, and that it sought to buttress itself by a 

1 Gen. 3 : 15. 



22,6 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

new interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, a con- 
vincing reply is made by Edersheim in his " Proph- 
ecy and History in Relation to the Messiah." He 
says : 

If the Messianic hope had sprung up during or immedi- 
ately after the exile, we should scarcely have expected it to 
cluster round the house of David, nor to center in the ' ' Son 
of David. ' ' For nothing is more marked than the deca- 
dence, and almost disappearance, of the house of David 
in that period. A national hope of this kind could scarcely 
have sprung up, when the royalty of David was not only 
matter of the past, but when its restoration was compara- 
tively so little thought of, or desired, that the descendants of 
the Davidic house seem in great measure to have become 
lost in the mass of the people. And the argument becomes 
all the stronger as we notice how, with the lapse of time, the 
Davidic line became increasingly an historical remembrance 
or a theological idea rather than a present power or reality. 
Throughout the Old Testament Davidic descent is always 
the most prominent in all Messianic pictures, while in later 
writings it recedes into the background as something in the 
long past which must be brought forth anew. In this respect, 
also, it is characteristic that the name, "Son of David," 
was the most distinctive title claimed by and given to Jesus, 
while in the case of all spurious Messianic movements this 
occupied only a subordinate, if any, place. 

As has been already intimated, these ancient 
seers, who "spoke as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost," did not always comprehend the full 
import of their utterances. They were God's 
mouthpieces. Their words had a local and intelli- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 237 

gible reference, and then swept far down through 
the centuries to some vaster fulfillment, which God, 
to whom one day is as a thousand years, clearly 
foresaw, but to which their vision did not always 
extend. There have been unwilling prophets like 
Balaam, and unconscious prophets like Caiaphas, 
and prophets whose vision was sometimes limited 
and dim, like David and Isaiah and Daniel and 
Malachi, who after all their inquiry and investiga- 
tion, still knew that the words they uttered were 
pregnant with a meaning that stretched out into the 
far future and had to do with the faith and the life 
of remote generations. This was what the Apostle 
Peter meant when he said : " Of which salvation 
the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, 
who prophesied of the grace that should come unto 
you : searching what, or what manner of time the 
Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, 
when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, 
and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it 
was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us 
they did minister the things, which are now reported 
unto you by them that have preached the gospel 
unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from 
heaven ; which things the angels desire to look 
into." 

These words contain the distinct declaration that 
those in old time who spoke for God, and were his 
messengers in the gradual unfolding of the great 



238 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

plan of human redemption, possessed only a limited 
knowledge and a limited vision, and after all their 
diligent and devout inquiry into the definite purport 
of their utterances, which were inspired by the ever- 
living spirit of Christ, they only knew that they 
were speaking for future generations, and that other 
eyes than theirs should look upon the final and 
glorious fulfillment, and that other hearts than 
theirs should feel the glow and the splendor of that 
bright day of which they were the prophetic morn- 
ing stars. This is the uniform opinion of all be- 
lievers in Old Testament inspiration and prophecy. 
Dr. Broadus very justly remarks : 

Many prophecies received fulfillments which the prophet 
does not appear to have at all contemplated. But as God' s 
providence often brought about the fulfillment, though the 
human actors were heedless or even ignorant of the predic- 
tions they fulfilled, so God' s Spirit often contemplated ful- 
fillments of which the prophet had no conception, but which 
the evangelist makes known. And it is of a piece with the 
general development of revelation that the later inspiration 
should explain the records of the earlier inspiration, and 
that only after the events have occurred should the earlier 
predictions of them be understood. 

And this is of a piece also with the general de- 
velopment of history, if we believe, as we must, that 
God has to do with the lives of men and of nations, 
and with the general progress of the race toward a 
definite goal. The events of to-day, and even the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 239 

utterances of to-day, may be dimly prophetic of the 
future and of a new order and a coming condition, 
and will be better understood in the clearer light 
of the coming time than they possibly can be now, 
just as we, who are farther down the stream of time, 
understand past events and past history better than 
the actors in them did. Every man and every 
nation, working in harmony with God and his 
unfolding providence, is in some sense, whether 
conscious of it or not, fulfilling the past and at the 
same time a prophet of the future. Tennyson has 
given to us a true interpretation of history and of 
life in the words : 

Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose 

runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of 

the suns. 

God works no otherwise. In the progress of spe- 
cific revelation, as in the progress of humanity, it is 
prediction and fulfillment, prediction and fulfill- 
ment ; the later interpreters, whose hearts are illu- 
mined by the Spirit of God, unfolding and applying 
the utterances of the earlier prophets, who spake as 
they were moved by the same Spirit, though the 
full meaning of their words they may not have per- 
fectly comprehended. 

In our study of the Messianic psalms we have 
accepted the interpretation of Christ and the New 



24O THE MESSJAH IN THE PSALMS 

Testament writers as correct and authoritative. It 
has not seemed necessary or wise or justifiable to 
question that. Indeed, to do so is inevitably to 
undermine all faith in their authority as teachers of 
ethical and religious truth. Their interpretation of 
the teachings of the Old Testament formed an es- 
sential and integral part of their religious system. 
Upon it they based their doctrine of God, of sin, of 
salvation, and of life everlasting. If they are open 
to criticism at this vital point, and are chargeable 
with errors and false interpretations, can we have 
confidence in them at any point? Who shall say 
where their fallibility ceases and their infallibility 
begins ? Or who shall say that they have any infalli- 
bility at all, and can be accepted as divinely com- 
missioned and authoritative expounders of religious 
truth ? To believe Christ and the apostles to be 
untrustworthy in the use of what they believed to 
be the word of God is to fill the mind with a univer- 
sal suspicion and doubt. 

It has been said by Prof. C. H. Toy, that we 
" must distinguish between the biblical interpreta- 
tion of the evangelists and apostles, and their au- 
thority as historians and teachers of ethics and re- 
ligion." In other words, their interpretations may 
be faulty and false, but the doctrines derived from 
those interpretations may be accepted as absolutely 
and unquestionably true, a position which seems 
strangely inconsistent and untenable. The same 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 24 1 

strictures, moreover, are applied to our Lord him- 
self. Professor Toy says : 

As an individual man, he had of necessity a definite, re- 
stricted intellectual outfit and outlook ; and these could be 
only those of his day and generation. . . Why should Christ 
be supposed to know the science of the criticism of the Old 
Testament, which began to exist centuries after his death ? 
. . . Christ follows the hermeneutical principles and shares 
the hermeneutical opinions of his day. . . We cannot assume 
Christ' s teaching and his interpretation of the Old Testa- 
ment to be final authority. . . The science of hermeneutics 
is the final authority when it seems to us to come in con- 
flict with him. . . The Bible itself nowhere teaches that 
a holy man, sent with a message from God, or a son of God, 
the embodiment of the divine [by which is evidently meant 
Jesus Christ, the Son of God] would be lifted above the 
ordinary conditions of human life. 

All of which is entirely contrary to the facts in 
the case, and flatly contradicted by the claims of 
Christ and the teachings of the New Testament. 
Jesus Christ was lifted above the ordinary condi- 
tions of human life. It has been found impossible 
to classify him. Though he was an actual histori- 
cal character, and lived at a definite period in the 
history of the Jewish nation and of the world, and 
in a well understood age, he was infinitely superior 
to his age and to any age, and possessed attributes 
and characteristics which separated him by an im- 
measurable distance from the men of his time and 
of all times. He was absolutely sinless. Surely 

Q 



242 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

this counts for something in estimating a person's 
relations to God and truth and his authority as a 
teacher. He spake as never man spake and as 
one having authority. He wrought miracles, hav- 
ing power over all diseases and organic defects and 
over the forces of nature, yea, even over death 
itself. His incarnation and resurrection, both well 
attested and impregnable facts, clothe with a super- 
natural halo his whole earthly manifestation. He 
took upon himself human nature. He was in 
some true, though mysterious sense, one of us. 
Yet he was above us, human and at the same 
time divine. He was the Son of man and the Son 
of God, not a Son of man but the Son of man, as if 
he was the offspring, not of an earthly father and 
mother, but the offspring of humanity ; and not a 
Son of God, as if he was simply one of a race 
created in God's image and in some sense his off- 
spring, but the Son of God, pre-eminently, pecu- 
liarly, exceptionally, the Son of God, " the only 
begotten Son of God." To take any other view 
of Christ, and attempt to put him on a level with 
the men of his time, and circumscribe him by the 
restrictions of his time, is to fly in the face of the 
inspired records. A hermeneutical science that 
undertakes to do this shows itself to be no science. 
It proclaims its own fallibility and untrustworthi- 
ness. 

Moreover, Christ was not only possessed of per- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 243 

feet sinlessness and miraculous power, but also of 
divine wisdom. He knew what was in men, their 
unuttered thoughts and motives. He knew the 
death of Lazarus before it was announced, and saw 
Nathanael under the fig tree. He predicted his 
own death and resurrection and the destruction of 
Jerusalem. All this was vastly different from ordi- 
nary or extraordinary insight or far-sight or fore- 
sight. It was of the nature of omniscience. More 
than this. He not only knew what was in man, 
but he knew what was in God, his perfect will and 
his eternal purpose. He knew that will and pur- 
pose as they had been unfolded through the cen- 
turies of Jewish history, and as they were then 
finding their culminating manifestation in his life 
and death in Judea. Moreover, he was the Word 
of God, the perfect expression of the mind, the 
thought, the wisdom of the Almighty, so far as it 
was necessary for human salvation. He had, also, 
the miraculous endorsement of the Father, as the 
absolute and authoritative teacher of truth, who 
said of him again and again, "This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." 

It seems absurd to say that such a being had 
only "the restricted intellectual outfit and outlook 
of his day and generation." He himself claimed 
that his mission on earth was to fulfill that which 
had been before of typical history and unfolding 
divine purpose and prophetic intimation, all of 



244 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

which he must have understood accurately in order 
to fulfill it. He was constantly pointing to Old 
Testament incidents as types of himself and to Old 
Testament language as foreshadowing his coming, 
his suffering, and his glory. To say that he simply 
followed the hermeneutical principles of his time, 
and therefore was restricted and liable to error, 
that he intentionally, not knowing that it was true, 
applied language to himself which had no applica- 
tion to him, and allowed his disciples to do so, is 
an open impeachment of his moral sincerity. It is 
not a question of intellectual restriction, but of 
moral integrity. In that memorable walk with the 
disciples to Emmaus after the resurrection, it is 
recorded that Jesus said to their doubting minds, 
" O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the 
prophets have spoken, ought not Christ to have 
suffered these things and to enter into his glory? 
And beginning at Moses [or more strictly, from 
Moses] and all the prophets, he expounded unto 
them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
himself." Another has said : " If Luke could have 
imparted to us the instruction communicated in 
that discourse, developing the true sense of the 
prophecies from the opening gospel of Gen. 3:15 
to the Sun of Righteousness in Mai. 4 : 2, what 
volumes of groping discussion in later ages might 
we well have spared !" Yet that fullness of record 
would have been no protection against that modern 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 245 

spirit of rash criticism which is ready to deny the 
accuracy of the gospel-record, and question the 
final authority of our Lord as an interpreter. If 
those two disciples had had a suspicion that Christ 
was talking about what he did not positively know, 
in applying Messianic prophecy after Messianic 
prophecy to himself, in all the Scriptures beginning 
from Moses, instead of their hearts burning within 
them with devout wonder and adoring gratitude, 
they would have burned with righteous indignation. 

Christ certainly spoke with a confidence born of 
absolute knowledge, when he asserted the fulfill- 
ment in himself of passage after passage of the 
Jewish Scriptures, finding them in each of the 
three great divisions into which the sacred books 
were divided. Just before his ascension into 
heaven he said to his disciples : " These are the 
words which I spake unto you, while I was yet 
with you, that all things must be fulfilled which 
were written in the law of Moses, and in the 
prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." 

The only basis for ascribing such human limita- 
tions to Christ as to make him simply a man of his 
time, circumscribed in knowledge, restricted in in- 
tellectual outlook, bounded by the ordinary condi- 
tions of human life, sharing the hermeneutical 
opinions of his day, right or wrong, as liable to 
mistakes in interpretation as his neighbors, and 
indeed guilty of applying to himself and of allow- 



246 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

ing his disciples to apply to him Old Testament 
passages which had no application to him, is that 
one exceptional, solitary, mysterious confession of 
his, contained in Mark 13 : 32, "Of that day and 
that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels 
which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the 
Father." This confession of Christ's, which stands 
absolutely alone and is limited to a particular 
event, and is to us irreconcilable with the character 
of the Son of God everywhere manifest in the Gos- 
pels, has been made to justify a supposition of 
human limitations which he never exhibited, and 
of liability to errors of which there is no slightest 
evidence. Whatever may be the explanation of 
those mysterious words, as mysterious as the union 
of the human and the divine in Christ's nature 
and personality, they have been greatly overworked. 
The inferences sometimes drawn from them are 
utterly unjustifiable. Prof. John Kennedy says : 

The proper inference from these words is, not that there 
might be many other things which he did not know, but 
that if there were other things which he did not know, he 
would have made the like confession instead of this. We 
find him actually claiming a knowledge far more wonderful 
than that which he disclaimed : "All things are delivered 
unto me of my Father : and no man knoweth the Son, but 
the Father : neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. ' ' * The 

1 Matt. 11 : 27. 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 247 

"all things" delivered to Christ by the Father are ex- 
plained, in part at least, by words used on other occasions, 
"all power," "all judgment," the forgiving of sin and the 
giving of life. Need we wonder that the Apostle Peter 
should say of him, « ' Lord, thou knowest all things " ? x 

This was the impression which Christ made upon 
his disciples, and upon the men of his day. And 
this is the impression which a candid reading of his 
biographies and contemplation of his life and con- 
duct make upon the mind of to-day, the impres- 
sion not only of superior, but of superhuman wis- 
dom, the possession of that divine fullness of 
knowledge which constitutes him the absolute 
Teacher of truth in all things. As Canon Rawlin- 
son says : " If in all this there was not displayed a 
divine consciousness, knowledge more than human, 
it is difficult to see how such knowledge could have 
been manifested." 

The indefinite kenosis in Phil. 2 : 8 must be de- 
termined in view of the facts of Christ's life that 
are known. We have no other way of understand- 
ing what it means. To make it the basis of all 
sorts of conjectures of ignorance, error, not to say 
deception, on the part of Christ, as is sometimes 
done, is utterly unscientific and unjustifiable. 

A like authority attaches to the teachings of 
Christ's disciples, and to their interpretation of the 
Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. They 

1 John 21 : 17. 



248 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

sat for three years under the careful instruction of 
their Master, and received from him that training 
in the truth which was to fit them for its promulga- 
tion in the world, as its authoritative teachers. He 
was constantly " expounding unto them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning himself," and con- 
stantly " opening their understanding that they 
might understand the Scriptures." They were to 
go and teach all nations, " teaching them to ob- 
serve all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you." They had the positive and clearly unfolded 
message of a divine and painstaking Teacher, 
whose progressive kingdom depended upon the in- 
telligent apprehension and faithfulness of his dis- 
ciples. And still further, as if to safeguard them 
from all possibility of error, he gave them the 
promise of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, 
whose special office should be to lead these teach- 
ers of men into all the truth of God. 

To say, then, that we have not in the New Tes- 
tament, in Christ and his apostles, the final au- 
thority in the interpretation of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures, is to blind one's eyes to the character and 
claims of the Son of God, and to make him so 
liable to human error, not to say intentional decep- 
tion, as to destrov all confidence in his recorded 
utterances on any subject. 

It is to ignore the careful and prolonged training 
of the first disciples by Christ in all the Scriptures 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 249 

in the things pertaining to himself, and to deny the 
promise of Christ and its fulfillment, of the gift of 
the Holy Spirit to those who were appointed to 
be the guides and instructors of men in the saving 
truths of the gospel. 

Moreover, it is to ascribe to a so-called herme- 
neutical science, that has been projected by fallible 
men, an infallibility which is denied to the Lord 
Jesus Christ. This science is confessedly of recent 
origin, and thus far has led to most divergent re- 
sults. It may be that to call it a science at all is 
to attribute to it a character which does not belong 
to it, to ascribe to it an authority which it does not 
deserve, and to give to its conflicting conclusions a 
certainty which their very antagonisms make im- 
possible. Science deals with facts, and has to do 
with certified knowledge. 

There are certain principles of interpretation 
which are fundamental ; but there is none that is 
more fundamental than this, that the Old Testa- 
ment must be interpreted in the light of the New. 
He who would understand either must understand 
both. He who would accept either must accept 
both. Professor Sayce, the distinguished archae- 
ologist of Oxford, who has done much to show not 
only the weakness but the folly of a purely lin- 
guistic and conjectural criticism, says : 

The New Testament cannot be easily separated from its 
forerunner, the Old. Not only does the New Testament 



25O THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

presuppose the Old, it presupposes also the historical credi- 
bility of the Old. The appeal to the law and the prophets 
would lose its weight, if the law were not what the Jews of 
the first century believed it to be, or if the Messiah of the 
prophets were not Jesus of Nazareth. 

And he does not hesitate, in the light of the 
monumental testimony of the past, which is in 
such a wonderful way confirming the antiquity and 
the credibility of the Bible, to pronounce much of 
the biblical criticism of to-day " extravagant," 
"unscientific," and " unhistoric." And in this 
judgment he is supported by some of the ablest 
scholars of two continents. The archaeologists are 
uniformly on the side of the traditional interpreta- 
tion of the Scriptures. We may affirm, therefore, 
that biblical criticism is hardly in a position to 
claim infallibility, and that though Christ may have 
been unacquainted with the methods of so-called 
scientific criticism, he could not have mistaken the 
meaning of his own Bible, the Scriptures which 
his Spirit is declared to have inspired and given to 
men. 

It should be added that because the rabbinical 
interpreters sometimes carried their Messianic in- 
terpretations too far, and became fanciful in their 
views, that does not in any degree affect the fact 
that there are genuine predictions of Christ "in 
the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the 
psalms." The careful and conservative use of 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 25 I 

Messianic quotations by New Testament writers, on 
the other hand, is evidence that they were not 
carried off their feet by the spirit of the time, but 
were rather under the guidance of the Spirit of 
God. They too spoke as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost They were inspired interpreters of 
inspired prophecies. 

The consideration which we have given to these 
Messianic portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, has 
served to emphasize three important facts. 

First, there is a visible progress in the revelation 
contained in the Bible, from Genesis onward, 
through moral precept, prophetic utterance, per- 
sonal type, and religious ceremony, until, "in the 
fullness of time " the revelation culminated in the 
coming, the person, the mission, the doctrine, the 
work of Jesus Christ. And it may be added that in 
the New Testament there is a progressive unfolding 
of divine truth as the minds of the disciples were 
able to apprehend it ; all being under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit, sometimes called the Spirit of 
God and sometimes the Spirit of Christ ; so that 
the Bible can be understood only as its books are 
studied in their relation to each other, being bound 
together by a clearly recognizable purpose, and 
unified into a complete whole, and constituting in 
their entirety God's highest and fullest revelation 
of himself to his intelligent moral creatures, vastly 
superior, both as imaging the being and character 



252 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

of God and as meeting the spiritual necessities of 
men, to the revelation which the material universe 
contains, and enforcing and supplementing in most 
necessary ways the testimony of the ethical nature 
of man to the existence and government of God. 
This progress in revelation is not a progress from 
error to truth, but from incompleteness to com- 
pleteness, from truth to larger truth, from prophecy 
to fulfillment, from the bulb and the root to the 
consummate flower and fruit The life is the same 
in its various manifestations. The unity of revela- 
tion is preserved in its progressive stages. The 
Old Testament and the New are forever bound to- 
gether by the cords of fulfilled prophecy. 

Secondly, the existence of veritable prophecy 
establishes the fact of the inspiration of the Scrip- 
tures which contain it. A single prophecy and its 
fulfillment might be an accident. But a whole 
series of prophecies, scores and hundreds, which 
are known to have come to pass, must certify to 
the divine origin of the book in which they are 
found. They constitute an indisputable super- 
natural element in the holy Scriptures of our faith. 
They are the evidence of the indwelling in the 
minds of the writers of the omniscient Spirit of 
God. It is the supernatural foreseeing and fore- 
telling, and not the natural imagining and guessing. 
The Bible cannot be regarded as the product of 
unaided natural forces, simply the result of the in- 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 253 

tellectual activity of the times in which its books 
were produced, a local, uninspired, humanly con- 
structed literature, and therefore without special 
authority or claim upon the reverence and faith of 
mankind. 

These books must have, to some extent, a local 
and temporal coloring. The divine stream must 
flow through human channels. The divine message 
must find expression in human language. God's 
life, and God's thought, in order to reach and affect 
men, must be interwoven with the histoiy of men 
and of nations. There must be a human element 
in revelation. " Holy men spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost." If in the past the 
human element in the Scriptures has been over- 
looked, it is undoubtedly true that " the opposite 
tendency now prevails, namely, of emphasizing the 
human element to the detriment of the divine." 
Another has said : 

Just in proportion as modern criticism of the Bible assigns 
the controlling power in the composition of the Scriptures 
to the human factor uninfluenced by the divine, does it 
depart from the traditional views of the evangelical church, 
and make the holy records more a production of man than 
of the Holy Ghost. 

The whole purpose of revelation would be 
thwarted, if the human element in it were such 
as to destroy or disturb confidence in the divine 
element and purpose in it, and the former were 



2 54 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

not kept in subordination to the latter and un- 
der its supreme control, leaving the product God's 
message, God's thought, God's will, expressing 
itself unmistakably to men, clothed with divine 
authority, containing its own credentials, able to 
enforce its own claims, and in some way to authen- 
ticate itself to the intelligence and conscience, the 
faith and obedience of men. In some true sense 
the gospel is "its own witness," to use Andrew 
Fuller's phrase, testifying to the world its divine 
character and supernatural origin, and carrying 
conviction to every mind that is willing to be con- 
vinced, that it is not of men, but of God, that it is 
not of evolution, but of inspiration. 

Suppose the Bible to be the product of natural 
forces ; then we have no standard of authority out- 
side of the incomplete, indistinct, and changeful 
utterances of our own consciousness. Every man 
becomes not only his own pope, but his own Bi- 
ble, whose utterance, affected by the introduction 
of sin into the world, ma}- be as ambiguous and 
untrustworthy as a heathen oracle. On the other 
hand, suppose the Bible to be inspired and guided 
in its teachings by the Spirit of God ; then we have 
an authoritative utterance, a supreme guide to faith 
and duty, a standard of final appeal in morals and 
religion, a revelation for all lands and all ages of 
the world. 

And thirdly, our study of the Messianic psalms 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 255 

has impressed us with the fact that Christ was the 
sum and object of all revelation. The light of di- 
vine prophecy, with its splendid and multitudinous 
rays, converged in him. The star in the East, which 
appeared at the birth of the Saviour, was but the 
materialization of that prophetic star which had 
been shining through all the previous centuries of 
the history of God's chosen people. The Christ 
of history was preceded by the Christ of prophecy. 
It is the same Christ The biography was out- 
lined and the picture limned centuries before he 
was born. There is no mistaking the identity of 
the picture and the reality. We need not now in- 
quire, "Art thou he that should come, or do we 
look for another? " We can say, as Philip said to 
Nathanael, "We have found him of whom Moses 
in the law, and the prophets did write." Other 
prophecies there are, recorded in the Old Testa- 
ment and New, some of which have been unmistak- 
ably fulfilled, and others yet await their accomplish- 
ment. All these are proof that God has knowledge 
and supervision of human history. But the pri- 
mary function of divine prophecy was the revelation 
of Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the Jews, and the 
Redeemer of the world. This supernatural element 
in God's plan for the instruction, the moral eleva- 
tion, the recovery of lost men, may be said to have 
been introduced as a necessary means in making 
ready the thought and life of the world for the 



256 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

great Incarnation, in establishing the claims of the 
incarnate Son of God upon the faith and obedi- 
ence of men, and in linking the destiny of the race 
with the progress and triumph of his kingdom, as 
foretold by himself, as well as by those whose lips 
were opened by his Spirit, both before and after 
him. Dr. George A. Gordon says : 

The Bible is the monumental record of the monumental 
revelation of the mind of God to mankind. The great in- 
strument of this disclosure of the thought of the Eternal is 
prophetic genius, and this mediating instrumentality be- 
comes supreme and final in the prophetic mind of Jesus 
Christ. 

No sane mind can question that the object was 
worthy of the supernatural means, that the person 
and mission of the Son of God are an anthem 
worthy of the prolonged prophetic prelude, that 
those brief, but glorious years of earthly manifesta- 
tion and the results which have already followed 
among men and nations, amply justify the slow 
centuries of inspired anticipation and reiterated 
hope. 

Christ, to whom the burden of prophecy pointed, 
was and has remained the highest expression of 
Godhood and manhood that has appeared in hu- 
man history, or that has been conceived by man. 
Men have obtained new and exalted conceptions 
of Deity as they have known Christ, and new and 
exalted conceptions of human life as well. The 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 257 

language of Edwin Arnold presents an exalted hu- 
man aspect of Christ's personality which hardly 
escapes being divine : 

First born of heaven, first soul of human souls, 
Which touched the top of manhood, and from height 
Of Godlike pure humanity reached God. 

Christ's own words have been uniformly accepted 
as descriptive of his relation to Deity and to the 
life of humanity : "This is life eternal, that they 
might know thee, the only true God," the only be- 
ing in whom the idea of God has been perfectly 
realized, "and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent," 
the only being in whom the idea of God has been 
perfectly manifested. And so to millions of our 
race the Christ of Bethlehem and of Calvary has 
become the source of eternal life, of spiritual peace, 
and of immortal hope. They have accepted him 
as the ordained Prophet of absolute and saving 
truths, the anointed Priest who is the sufficient 
sacrifice for human guilt, and the King of rightful 
and blessed reign. He has become to them the 
Alpha and Omega of personal faith and experience. 

Through him the first fond prayers are said, 

Our lips of childhood frame ; 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with his name. 

It should not be forgotten that there needs to 
be a spiritual preparation for the apprehension of 



258 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Christ To know him simply within the limits of 
his early manifestation, as a man among men, is to 
know but a small segment of his being, and to fail 
to know even that truly. No man knows a seg- 
ment who does not know the circle to which it be- 
longs. The circle of Christ's being is larger than 
the natural eye can take in. Sympathy is the 
widest door to knowledge. Love generates in- 
sight. Only a mind that has been touched by the 
Spirit of Christ can apprehend the person of Christ 
in prophecy or history or present glory. The his- 
toric Christ is not the whole Christ. The apos- 
tles, who had known the Christ of prophecy and 
the Christ of history, passed on to a still larger 
knowledge of him after his resurrection. Though 
they had known Christ after the flesh, yet hence- 
forth they acknowledged that they knew him within 
such narrow limitations no more. The person of 
Christ as well as all the truths of his kingdom are 
spiritually discerned. No wiser words, or more 
necessary, have been written than these by Rev. 
Stanley Leathes : 

It will not be enough to have known Christ after the flesh. 
To be in harmony with these ancient writers, we must 
know him as they knew him. We must have the veil rent 
aside from our eyes that we may look straight into the mys- 
teries of the kingdom of heaven. It is Christ as a living 
person, and not merely as a character of the historic past, 
a speaking but inanimate portrait in the gallery of time, 
that we must set before us. It is the spiritual person of the 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 259 

Messiah, existing now, as then, in the fullness of essential 
Godhead, with whom we must hold communion. We like- 
wise must be partakers of a Messianic consciousness and 
have a personal knowledge of the person of the Lord's 
Anointed, before we can appreciate all that prophets and 
kings have said of him. And to this end we must be filled 
with the Spirit that abode on him, whose office it is to take 
of the things of Christ and show them unto us, for we have 
been assured on apostolic authority that "no man can say 
that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." 

Christ has vindicated his claim as the worthy ob- 
ject of divine prophecy, not only by his ministry to 
millions of men as their personal Saviour, but by 
his moral influence upon society as a social regen- 
erator. Wherever Christianity has been received 
as a spiritual faith, its fruits have been abundant, 
and uniformly the same. Wherever it has had 
free course, it has been glorified. It has reformed 
men, has sweetened and sanctified the family and 
the home, has made the life of woman tolerable 
and her happiness secure, has regenerated social 
life, has changed customs, has affected legislation, 
has elevated nations, and has purified civilizations, 
so far as they have been purified. It has done not 
a little to bring about that new social order, which 
is distinctly portrayed in the Messianic prophecies. 
And this it has done through the wonderful per- 
sonal influence of its divine founder. One needs 
but to read such books as Uhlhorn's "Conflict of 
Christianity with Heathenism," Schmidt's " Essai 



260 THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 

Historique" Brace's " Gesta Christi" Storrs' "The 
Divine Origin of Christianity indicated by its His- 
torical Effects," or even that popular historical 
novel "Quo Vadis," to be persuaded that for what- 
ever is highest and best, aye, for whatever is decent 
and respectable, in our social life and our modern 
civilization, we are indebted to the life and teaching 
of the Man of Galilee. One testimony will be 
sufficient to prove what no one calls in question. 
Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," says: 

It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an 
ideal character, who through all the ages of eighteen cen- 
turies has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned 
love ; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, na- 
tions, temperaments, and conditions ; has been not only 
the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to 
its practice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it 
may be truly said that the simple record of three short 
years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften 
mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all 
the exhortations of moralists. 

It remains only to be said that He, in whose 
character and in the incidents of whose recorded 
life, from his birth to his death and resurrection, 
so much of ancient prophecy was fulfilled, and who 
has already pushed on his foretold conquests over 
so much of the earth's surface, cannot fail to bring 
all nations at last into subjection to himself accord- 
ing to the declared will of God. Not yet are all 



THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS 26 1 

things fulfilled " which were written in the law of 
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms" 
concerning him. The prophetic Christ and the 
historic Christ must be the triumphant Christ. 
Prophecy fulfilled is the pledge of the fulfillment 
of remaining prophecy. No Christian can despair 
of the victory of truth over falsehood and error, of 
righteousness over sin, of purity over all forms of 
corruption, of peace over hatred and strife, of light 
over darkness, of Christian missions over all false 
religions, of the Lord Christ over the opposing 
forces of evil in the world. Christianity is declared 
to be the progressive, exclusive, and final religion. 
That it may be fulfilled which was spoken by the 
prophet, "He shall have the heathen for his inher- 
itance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his 
possession." That it may be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet, "All kings shall fall down 
before him, all nations shall serve him." That it 
may be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, 
"He must reign till he hath put all enemies under 
his feet." That it may be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophet, "In his name every knee 
shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord 
to the glory of God the Father." That it may be 
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, "The 
kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms 
of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign 
for ever and ever." 



INDEX OF AUTHORS QUOTED 



Aben-Ezra, 129. 
Alexander, J. A., 64, 66, 92. 
Alford, Henry, 4, 176. 
Arnold, Edwin, 257. 
Arnold, Thomas, 128. 

Bacon, Francis, 154. 
Barrows, E. P., 4, 175, 202. 
Bernard of Clairvaux, 46. 
Brace, C. L., 260. 
Briggs, Chas. A., 179. 
Broadus, John A., 207, 220, 238. 

Calvin, John, 30, 52, 160, 188. 
Cheyne, T. K., 102, 181, 218. 
Clarke, W. N. f 53, 54. 

Dale, R. W., 62. 

Delitzsch, F., 30, 104, 124, 152, 180. 

Dennis, James S., 117. 

De Wette, W. M. L., 30, 151, 187. 

Ebrard, J. H. A., 132. 
Edersheim, Alfred, 67, 222, 236. 
Ellicott, C. J., 225. 
Ewald, G. H. A., 73. 

Farrar, F. W., 38, 94. 
Fuller, Andrew, 254. 

Geikie, Cunningham, 203, 210, 219, 

227. 
Godet, F. L., 37, 38, 184, 191, 225. 
Gordon, George A., 76, 256. 

Hackett, H. B„ 91, 101, 149, 201. 



Hase, Carl, 45. 
Hengstenberg, E. W., 152. 
Herder, J. G., 17. 
Hitzig, F., 124, 191. 
Hovey, Alvab, 209. 
Hupfeld, H., 103, 124. 
Hutton, R. H., 103. 

Johnson, Franklin, 8, 66, 174, 177, 
179, 188, 217. 

Kennedy, John, 246. 
Kimchi, D., 129. 
Krummacher, F. W., 42. 
Kuenen, A., 48, 216. 

Lange, J. P., 89. 

Leathes, Stanley, 114, 174, 232, 258. 

Lecky, W. E. H., 260. 

Luthardt, C. E., 234. 

Luther, Martin, 11, 156. 

Mendelssohn, 129. 
Meyer, H. A. W., 36, 195. 
Michaelis, J. D., 190. 
Milman, H. H.. 223. 
Milton, John, 69. 
Moulton, Richard G., 19. 

Neander, A., 35, 226. 

Oehler, G. F., 51. 
Osgood. Howard, 176. 



Paulus, H. E. G , 45. 
Perowne, J. J. S., 31, 



), 57, 104, 



263 



264 



INDEX OF AUTHORS QUOTED 



126, 128, 145, 152, 167, 189, 191, 

201, 208. 
Plumptre, E. H., 34. 
Pressense, E. de, 100, 144. 

Rawlinson, George, 247. 
Row, C. A... 85. 

Sadler, M. F., 127. 
Savonarola, G., 82. 
Sayce, A. H., 247. 
Schleiermacher, F. E. D., 45. 
Schmidt, C, 259. 
Scott, W. A., 27. 
Smith, John Pye, 3, 187, 189. 
Stalker, James, 45. 



Stanley, A. P., 126. 
Stearns, O. S., 115. 
Storrs, R. S., 260. 
Strauss, D. F., 40, 45. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 239. 
Tholuck, A., 105, 187. 
Toy, C. H., 65, 66, 176, 183, 187, 190, 
203, 240, 241. 

Uhlhorn, G., 259. 

Watts, Isaac, 70, 158. 
Wellhausen, J., 16, 68, 145, 153. 
Westcott, B. F., 93. 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE 
REFERENCES 



Acts 1 : 20, pp. 200, 201 ; 2 : 34-36, p. 
54 ; 2 : 36, p. 15 ; 3 : 14, p. 95 ; 4 : 

11, p. 219 ; 4 : 25-27, p. 7 ; 4 : 27, p. 
95 ; 13 : 26, p. 90 ; 13 : 33, pp. 7, 8, 
17. 

2 Chronicles 20, p. 152. 
Colossians 3 : 1, pp. 54, 63, 96. 

1 Corinthians 15, p. 74 ; 15 : 25, pp. 
54, 58 ; 15 : 25-27, pp. 63, 181. 

2 Corinthians 3 : 14, p. 206 ; 11 : 2, 
p. 141. 

Daniel 7 : 13, 14, p. 67. 
Deuteronomy 32 : 43, p. 215. 

Ephesians 1 : 19, 20, p. 96 ; 1 : 20, 
p. 54 ; 1 : 20-23, p. 57 ; 1 : 22, pp. 
181, 63; 4:8, p. 194; 5 : 22, etc., 
p. 141. 

Exodus 12 : 46, p. 183. 

Ezekiel 16 : 8, p. 139 ; 34 : 24, p. 129. 

Genesis 3 : 15, pp. 235, 244. 

Hebrews 1, p. 58 ; 1 : 3, p. 54 ; 1 : 5, 
pp. 7, 8, 9 ; 1 : 6, 7, pp. 131, 215 ; 
1 : 10-12, pp. 215-217 ; 2:6-9, p. 
180 ; 2 : 8, p. 182 ; 2 : 12, p. 41 ; 5, 
pp. 59-63 ; 5 : 5, pp. 8, 9 ; 5 : 5-10, 
p. 9 ; 6, pp. 59-63 ; 7, pp. 59-63 ; 
8: 1, p. 54; 10:5-7, p. 186; 10: 

12, 13, pp. 54, 63 ; 12 : 2, pp. 54, 
58. 



Hosea 2 : 19, 20, p. 139. 

Isaiah 8 : 10, p. 167 ; 8 : 14, p. 220 ; 
8:23, p. 174; 9:1, 2, p. 174; 53: 
11, p. 41 ; 54 : 5, p. 139 ; 55 : 3, p. 
91 ; 62 : 4, 5, p. 139. 

John 2 : 17, pp. 200, 204 ; 5 : 22, p. 
214 ; 6 : 30, 31, pp. 208-210 ; 12 : 13, 
pp. 221, 225 ; 13 : 18, p. 190 ; 15 : 
25, pp. 200, 203 ;• 17 : 5, p. 8 ; 19 : 
23, 24, p. 37 ; 19 : 28, p. 36 ; 19 : 36, 
p. 183 ; 21 : 17, p. 247. 

1 Kings 4 : 21 ; 10 : 1, 9, 10, 24, p. 
104. 

Luke 1 : 32, 33, p. 4 ; 1 : 35, p. 95 ; 
19 : 38, p. 221 ; 20 : 17, p. 218 ; 23 : 
46, p. 182. 

Malachi 4 : 2, p. 244. 

Mark 11 : 9, p. 221 ; 12 : 10, 11, p. 

218; 12 : 35-37, p. 52; 12 : 36, 

p. 63 ; 13 : 32, p. 246 ; 14 : 62, p. 

63. 
Matthew 11 : 27, p. 246 ; 13 : 34, 35, 

p. 207, 208 ; 21 : 4, 5, p. 222 : 21 : 9, 

p. 221.; 21 : 12-16, p. 227 ; 21 : 42, p. 

218 ; 22 : 1, etc., p. 140 ; 23 : 39, p. 

228 ; 25 : 1, etc. p. 140 ; 26 : 56, p. 

205 ; 27 : 27-30. pp. 200, 205 ; 27 : 

30-34, p. 205 ; 27 : 34, p. 200 ; 27 : 

39, p. 36 ; 27 : 43, p. 36. 

265 



266 



INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 



Numbers 9 : 12, p. 183. 

1 Peter 1 : 12, p. 54 ; 2 : 6, 7, pp. 
219, 15 ; 2 : 8, p. 220 ; 3 : 22, pp. 
54, 63. 

2 Peter 1 : 4, p. 182 ; 1 : 21, p. 54. 
Philippians 2 : 8, p. 247 ; 2 : 9-11, 

pp. 15, 56 ; 3 : 10, p. 96. 
Psalm 2, pp. 3-24, 93, 60 ; 8 : 2, p. 
227 ; 5, 6, pp. 129, 180 ; 16, pp. 73- 
96 ; 22, pp. 27-47 ; 22 : 8, p. 36 ; 
31 : 5, p. 182 ; 34 : 20, p. 182 ; 40 : 
6-8, p. 184 ; 41 : 9, 10, pp. 190. 191 ; 
45, pp. 123-146; 46, pp. 149-169; 
51, p. 185 ; 68, p. 192 ; 69, pp. 200- 
206 ; 69 : 21, p. 37 ; 72, pp. 99-119 ; 
78, pp. 206-210 ; 87, p. 52 ; 89, pp. 
210-214 ; 96-98, p. 52 ; 96 : 13, p. 



214 ; 97 : 7, p. 215 , 98 : 9, p. 214 ; 
102, pp, 215-217 ; 109, p. 201 ; 110, 
pp. 51-70, 19, 93 ; 113-118, p. 225 ; 
118 : 22, 23, pp. 217-221 ; 118 : 26, 
pp. 221-228. 

Revelation 19 : 7, 8, 9, p. 143 ; 21 : 

2, p. 143 ; 22 : 17, p. 143. 
Romans 1 : 3, p. 211 ; 1 : 4, p. 17 ; 

4 : 24, 25, p. 96 ; 8 : 34, p. 63 ; 10: 

9, p. 96 ; 11 : 9, 10, pp. 200, 206 ; 

15 : 3, pp. 200, 204 ; 19, p. 135. 

2 Samuel 7 : 16, p. 4. 



Zechariah 
p. 222 



:9-17, p. 174; 9:10, 



EB 2 19™ 



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Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: July 2005 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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